Twitch
by PirateFox
Summary: Somewhat AU: Takes place all during the year following the final Battle of Hogwarts. George is having serious difficulties dealing with Fred's death. Will Cassandra Orcal be his salvation or will their relationship crash and burn? More of summary inside
1. Prologue: Blade

Twitch

**Summary: **Somewhat AU: Takes place all during the year following the final Battle of Hogwarts. George is having serious difficulties dealing with Fred's death. Will Cassandra Orcal be his salvation or will their relationship crash and burn? (it's better than the summary makes it sound, really). Couples: George/OC, with some slight Fred/Hermione. Takes some things from both the book-_and_-movieverse.

**XWarningX: **I do not own the _Harry Potter _universe (which makes me sad), but if you come across a character's name that you don't recognize, such as Cassandra Orcal and her family, Shepherd Swan, Velveeta Lynch, or Leif Valdemar, than those **are **mine, so no touchy. And the plot is mine, too, so please, ask me or something if you want to borrow an idea or whatever. Thank-you. ^_^

**Prologue -- Blade**

* * *

May 31st, 1998:

The bathroom was littered with empty fire whiskey bottles and drained antihistamine potion capsules. George Weasley very nearly broke his neck after stepping on one or the other as he had stood drunkenly up from the tiled floor. He stumbled his way over to the bathroom sink, bracing to steady himself on the edges of the counter it was built into.

The red-haired boy looked at his reflection in the mirror without really focusing on it, his blue eyes dulled and his face absolutely pallid from illness and depression. He let his gaze travel father down his shirtless torso and miraculously noticed that he was beginning to appear emaciated around the middle. Days of not eating and very little sleep were taking their toll on him.

It was just the way he wanted it to be.

George brought his eyes back to the mirror, taking a hand and rubbing it hard down his face. As he did this, he inspected the once vibrant thatch of hair now subdued to a gingerish-gray and was growing long and scraggly; the dark circles painted under the eye sockets his blue orbs seemed to have sunken into; the long nose that protruded out of his face and threatened to whack people across their cheek if they weren't careful; the cracked lips that had not seen a drop of water in days; the stubbly chin and jaw line that had both always been a tad bigger and stronger than his twin brother's had – "had" being the operative word here… And last, the white bandage stuck to the side of his skull to hide the hideous, gaping hole where his right ear had been at one point.

His fingers releasing their hold on his aforementioned chin, George somberly flicked a stare down on the counter-space where a stainless-steel blade attached with a handle lay glinting up at him innocently. It was the Muggle razor blade he'd bought (with some difficulty) only yesterday, just after the funeral of Fred Weasley – his best friend, his mentor, his partner-in-crime-and-business.

It had finally all boiled down to this…

George reached his left hand out to touch the blade's handle, but did nothing more. It was wooden, painted black with gold accents and a polished finish to make it all smooth and easier for a person, non-magical or otherwise, to hold.

George eyed the blade heavily, in his mind wandering over the events of the past month. The final battle of the Second War on May 2nd (which now seemed like a lifetime ago) and the funerals held in following weeks. Nymphadora Tonks (just Tonks or she would have killed you) and her husband, Remus Lupin, were buried together on the same day, May tenth. Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody's body, which had disappeared after he had been killed in the Battle over Little Whinging, had never been recovered and his crazy, fake eyeball had been buried in an unknown area of forest by Harry Potter, the Wizarding Hero, the Boy Who Lived, and Voldemort's Doom. It was a sad thought, but, even though the old Auror was honorably mentioned along with others whose bodies were never found, he didn't receive a funeral.

Shepherd Swan, the school sweetheart of Harry Potter's dead godfather, Sirius Black (killed in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries by his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange), had been stuck down by her own brother, a Death Eater. She repaid in kind, however, and took him with her in death. She was buried two days after Tonks and Lupin, on the twelfth.

There were more burials in between the four he cared about the most, of course, but there was no way he could remember everyone who died. He somehow would've liked to, he thought at some unimportant time. That way, even if he had not known them, he could silently thank them and tell them good-bye.

Oh, he knew he wasn't the only one broken up over everything, no, no, no. He knew Harry, despite everything he had done to bring about the death of the most dangerous Dark Wizard of their time, would most likely feel as if he was the cause of all the deaths, or at least guilty he could not prevent at least a few. No matter how many assurances he got telling him that it was not his fault, that shit happens in war, he would still probably blame himself for years to come. He'll always look back and wonder, "Why? Why couldn't I have helped _him _or _her_…?"

Harry Potter's best friend and sister-at-heart, Hermione Granger, had sat beside him at most of the funerals and had bawled her eyes out during every, single one of them. She would do this while crying into the shoulder of George's own little brother, Ronald Weasley, whom she was now deeply involved with. Ron, though he remained steadfast for his girlfriend sake for the duration of most of the heart-wrenching ceremonies, finally lost himself when it was at last Fred's time to go.

The entire Weasley clan was seated in the front row seats as guests of honor. All of them had fought in the precedent battle, even little Ginny, the youngest child and only daughter to be born into the family for a few generations. And whose heart was intimately entwined with Harry Potter's for now and forever more. Mrs. Weasley, still shaken from her own encounter with Bellatrix, in which she came out victorious, slaughtered the bitch with a Killing Curse. George saw his mother in a whole new light after witnessing that spectacle. She, however, insisted to everyone that she'd forever remain scarred. She had never liked killing anyone and never would. George loved her for that.

The rest of the family came out of the war relatively unharmed. The only permanent injuries were the scratches and claw marks all over Bill Weasley's, one of the oldest of the Weasley boys, other than Charlie, face, which he received from an untransformed werewolf by the name of Fenrir Grayback over a year ago now. Luckily, he escaped that unfortunate quarrel with his life and only a few were-wolfish tendencies. And he had a loving wife to take care of him in Fleur Weasley, formally Delacour.

Of course, George's ear figured into the mix, as well. He had lost it by his own former potions professor, Severus Snape, during the Battle over Little Whinging. And now, no matter what Harry told him about Snape being a good and brave man deep down and that the ear-thing had been an accident, George vowed that he would never forgive that greasy-haired git. He had only disliked the man before, but things were in a whole different Quidditch field from this moment on. It wasn't important that the bastard was now dead, too, and would be buried sometime on June first.

Speaking of Quidditch, the whole, former Gryffindor team was there as well. Oliver Wood, Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, and Katie Bell had all once played with Harry, George, and Fred on the same squad. It was hard to see him leave so suddenly for them, too. Even Oliver was tearing up.

The one student taking it the hardest, however, had to be Lee Jordan, the twin's mutual friend. He always had his face in his hands and, when he did show it, he appeared to have not gone to bed in days. He walked out when it was Fred's turn. George figured that the dark-skinned boy could just not handle the fact that he and Fred would never pull another prank together again. George's heart went out to him.

And that didn't even account for the hundreds of others that George didn't know or had not thought of who may have lost their loved ones in battle. He had heard the Creevey's lost their oldest son, Colin, whom was an acquaintance of Harry's, when he was told to leave the grounds before the fighting on the account of being underage, but he had snuck back and gotten himself killed. The poor mite. It was all just one, big, horrible sob-fest.

And, then there was Cassandra Orcal…

* * *

A/N: Well, there you have it. The first of a three-part prologue. I'm sorry to leave all of you with a cliffhanger, but, believe me, if I'd left everything together, this would've been one _loooong _chapter. :3 As for who exactly Cassandra Orcal and Shepherd Swan are, you'll find out as the story goes on. Thanks for reading and leave nice reviews, please. ^_^


	2. Prologue: A Flashback Worth 7 Years

***Flashback***

_ He and Fred met her their first day back to school, which began their third year. She had come in with a gaggle of first years and was sorted into Gryffindor along with Hermione, Harry, and Ron. Most of the table was only interested in Harry, including Fred and himself, but they made time to meet her, too_

_She was a small girl, maybe an inch or two shorter than Hermione at the time. Her head was covered in dark auburn hair that came only to her shoulders, her eyes an inquisitive honey color. And her smile could brighten up a room._

_She usually tagged along with Harry and Ron, as she met Harry before in Diagon Ally and seemed to have developed quite a crush on him. The two of them took to her faster than they had Hermione, the bushy-haired tweet a tad too much into rules at first. Once the three of them had saved Hermione from a dreadful date with a mountain troll someone had let in, the four became inseparable._

_Well, almost…_

_She found them one day in a dark niche in some random hallway a bit after the Troll Incident. They'd been setting up a trap for Filch, the school caretaker. When she started asking questions about what they were doing, they quickly got annoyed and told her to bugger off. Surprisingly, she didn't seem perturbed by their attitudes at all…so, she stayed. She watched them intently until her presence weighed heavily on the both of them._

_Fred, being the mad genius he was, told her that if she really wanted to help them, she'd go stand _outside _the niche and act as guard. She took this role honorably and soon ran off. He and Fred had smiled at one another, thinking they had gotten rid of her for good._

_She came back two minutes later, flapping her arms wildly. Fred, fed up with her, told her to get lost or he'd make all of her hair fall out. She didn't seem to hear him, but she ran off in the opposite direction anyway. Two minutes _after _that, Filch and his cat caught them in the niche and he and Fred were sure they were done for._

_As the caretaker was dragging them down the hallway to McGonagall's office, a small voice cried out from behind and, suddenly, Filch was twenty feet into the air. She came out from the shadows with her impressively long, red-colored wand pointing straight up and they knew she'd spared them. They told her she was going to end up in trouble with them once Filch got down. She only grinned mischievously and told them, "I know."_

_She informed them that her name was Cassandra. They were the first ones to call her Sandy. She soon became just as inseparable from them as her other three friends and she began her tradition of going back and forth between their groups._

_When she, Hermione, Harry, and Neville Longbottom all got caught out in the halls after curfew one night, McGonagall took 50 from each. Though Draco Malfoy, a Slytherin boy in their year who was their rival, as all Gryffindor and Slytherin students were, got roped into detention with them, the damage was done. Harry was turned from Boy Wonder to a zero and poor Hermione, Sandy, and Neville were shunned from everyone. Even he and Fred had found it difficult to talk to them, as they had hoped for a chance at the House Cup this year. Not even the fact that Harry had become the new, brilliant Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team could fix it._

_To their surprise, she shunned them right back. When they had finally thought she had been punished enough, they tried to catch a talk with her in the library with Hermione, but she quickly put her stuff away and ditched the table, pulling her book-crazy friend along behind her. They were stunned and did not try to speak again until the end of the year after Harry had saved the Sorcerer's Stone and had faced a weak Voldemort for the first time since he was a baby. Good ol' Dumbledore restored the Golden Quartet their points (and a special ten points to Neville for "standing up to his friends") and Gryffindor finally won the House Cup after years of coming up short._

_Having made-up by the end of that feast, Cassandra promised to write them every week by owl post and she made good on that promise. They had to make a special drawer to even hold all of her letters, because they would not fit anywhere else (the floor was always littered with the plans – and results – of their experimentations anyway) and they wanted to keep her stuff forever._

_

* * *

_

_ They met her again outside of Flourish and Blotts, the bookstore in Diagon Ally where most Hogwarts students got their books. Harry had gone missing in the Floo Network, but when they saw her step out of the shop, looking taller and older with her slightly longer hair, they cat-called her as a joke to get her attention. She had turned to them, not recognizing them for a moment, but then she squealed and had launched herself right at George, knocking them both to the ground. Once they had gotten up from the compromising position, Fred, pretending to be angry, asked why he didn't get a hug first and Sandy simply replied that she had not learned how to tell them apart, yet, so she figured embracing one first was as good as the other. They all had a good chuckle on that one._

_George was proud of her when she showed the most resistance to Gildiroy Lockhart's, their new Defense Against the Dark Art's teacher, charms, as most of the other girls, including Hermione, had the hots for him. She told him and Fred that she refused to fall for his act. He was even more impressed with her when she, along with Hermione and Ron, had stuck by Harry when he was accused of being the Heir of Slytherin. So steadfast was her loyalty, she even a couple times chastised Fred and George when they teased the Boy Wonder about his "new found royalty." They told her it was all in good fun, but she kept a suspicious eye on them after that._

_This was also Ginny's first year and the poor child had acquired her own crush on Harry, gaining herself a rival in Sandy. The twins mocked the two of them constantly, though neither girl paid much attention and competed under the Chamber of Secrets hysteria for Mr. Potter's attention._

_Tragedy struck, however, when both Hermione _and _Sandy became Petrified after looking into reflections of the Basilisk that was taking residence in the Chamber's eyes. Fred and George were devastated by this and came by the hospital to visit them daily when Harry and Ron, busy with saving the school and, later, Ginny, could not._

_They considered themselves to be the happiest when she was finally Unpetrified (they were happy to see Hermione, too, but Sandy was different). It was at the end of the year feast when Sandy and Ginny at last put aside their differences and became friends._

_

* * *

_

_ Her third year was when she began experimenting with the gothic look and the hair dyes and stuck with it. She first decided on using magic to change her hair color, but it didn't go the way she hoped. Through-out the year, her now shaggily-layered hair went from an ice blue to an earthy green to black-and-yellow (like a bumblebee) to green-and-red (around Christmas, the only time she was able to do it somewhat correctly) to finally a pure gold color. Fred made the horrible joke of cashing in her hair to pay for the future joke shop he and George always planned for. Fed up with the whole thing by the end, Sandy just left her hair its natural auburn and vowed to stick with Muggle products from then on._

_Also in that year, the notorious Sirius Black (later found out to be Harry's godfather) escaped Azkaban (a wizard prison) and snuck into the school by way of a secret passage. Tragedy struck their little group again when Sandy, unwisely walking a corridor alone one afternoon, accidently encountered Black as he was attempting to enter the Gryffindor common room. Afraid she would alert the castle of his presence, Black knocked her unconscious with a spell that sent her floating almost to the ceiling and stuck there. It wasn't until her fellow Gryffindors found her was she finally taken to the hospital wing, where she lay in a coma for some of the school year._

_Once again, George and Fred, worried over their friend, would come in to visit when the remaining three members of the Golden Quartet could not. Even after she had woken up, Madam Pomfrey forced her to stay in bed to make sure nothing had been permanently damaged. Hermione, along with Fred and George, courteously brought in the tons of homework she'd missed and even helped her catch up (well, Hermione did most of that)._

_Sirius Black was caught at some point near the end of the school year, but by the next morning, it was discovered that he _and _Hagid's accused pet hippogriff, Buckbeak(who had injured Malfoy when the latter insulted it), had escaped the Dementor's (Azakaban's guards) Kiss and being beheaded, respectively. It was on this morning when Sandy was finally allowed to leave the hospital wing. George and Fred came to "escort" her to the Great Hall and the end of the year feast. As they were walking down, Sandy suddenly blurted out that she was thinking of becoming an Animagus and that she was going to ask Professor McGonagall (Head of Gryffindor and the Transfiguration teacher) to tutor her in the finer points. The twins, though they had always thought Sandy was a natural at Transfiguration and could do it easily, were confused about why she wanted it in the first place. She shocked them by holding a finger to her lips and telling them, "It's a secret..." before running away to the Great Hall without them. Fred and George would not find out her reasons why she wanted to be an Animagus until at least a year later._

_

* * *

_

_ She and Hermione came to stay at the Burrow for the last few weeks of s__ummer (it was the girls' first time there). The reason: Their dad had come into the possession of some Quidditch World Cup tickets. She, as far as the twins knew, was not a big Quidditch fan (except for her own team at Hogwarts), but she fooled them into thinking otherwise by how excited she became in the days leading up to it._

_She spent most of her time in their room, experiencing first hand one of their legendary explosions when an experiment went horrible wrong. The first thing she did when the air cleared was pump her fist towards the ceiling, shouting, "That was awesome!" She became their first supporter in their endeavor to begin Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. And they got the opportunity to watch when she coerced Hermione into dying her hair (now grown to about armpit-length) a deep blood-red. George agreed that it suited her, but secretly wished she'd dye it back. Fred was fascinated by the Muggle product the girls had used and was just wondering if they could use it in a concoction somehow, when said Muggle-born female scolded him about causing more damage to his own house. Fred went eerily quiet for a time (which was unusual for him) and he stared wide-eyed at Hermione as if he was just seeing her for the very first time. He began to act strange whenever she came around from then on and would do so until the day he died._

_Neither George, nor Sandy had ever bothered asking him about his change in behavior towards Hermione…_

_They had to travel to the Quidditch World Cup Final via a PortKey; she somehow had squeezed herself between him and Fred as they all grabbed on to that disgusting, old boot. The travel time was so fast, the Key threw the twins, Harry, Sandy, Hermione, _and _Ron away and they all landed in a heap in the middle of an unfamiliar field. Quite embarrassingly, Sandy had fallen face-first right on top George and that was the first time he had known that she was definitely _not _a little girl anymore. She didn't seem to notice the awkward situation (she actually barely seemed humiliated at all by the fact that she was now straddling one of her best VERY MALE friends) and she stood up as if nothing was amiss. She even helped _him_ stand by offering him a hand._

_The entire event was such a blast, though, George quickly got over the awkwardness of that moment. They got to stay in an assigned tent that was magically expanded inside to accommodate them all (which fascinated Harry to no end) and, instead of sitting in normal seats down in the metaphorical boonies of bleachers, they got to share box seats with the Minister of Magic, __Cornelius Fudge. They only downside to this was that the Malfoys were seated in the same box in the chairs behind them, but they went relatively ignored as the excitement of the game unfolded._

_Their entire posse was for Ireland (although Ron's allegiance was questionable, since he held the Bulgaria team's seeker, Viktor Krum, in very high regard). Fred and George made a bet with the Cup's commentator, Ludo Bagman, that Ireland would win the game, though Krum would get the Snitch. For the first time, Sandy did not agree with their scheme and made it clear that she thought it was a horrible idea. Luckily, the twins came out the victors and Bagman consented to pay when he got the money._

_Later that night, things took a turn for the worse. As everyone was getting ready for bed (or, at least, _pretending_ to) all Hell broken loose as a group of Death Eaters (Voldemort supporters) attacked the campsite and tormented a few local Muggles. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Sandy were split off from the rest of the group. It was at least an hour before they were found and it was right after the Dark Mark, Voldemort's symbol, appeared in the sky for the first time in 13 years._

_Her fourth year (their sixth) was Hogwarts' turn to host the Triwizard Tournament. It was a competition of three schools where they chose a student from each to compete in three tasks. The prize was a trophy and a hefty sum of money. And, best of all, around Christmas time, there would be a dance known as the Yule Ball for students fourteen and up to attend. Dance lessons and gossip of who was going to take who was abound._

_Sandy, however, didn't appear as interested as the other girls were and filled up her free time with private lessons from McGonagall on how to be an Anigmagus, which surprisingly, their professor had readily agreed to. She spent so much time with the classes that she made less-and-less time to hang out with the twins, which disappointed them to no end (particularly George, who missed her something awful)._

_Before long, the other two schools that planned on attending the Tournament showed up. The __Beauxbatons Academy of Magic__ and __Durmstrang Institute__ arrived in October (Beauxbatons came with a gaggle of beautiful French girls…). Surprisingly, Viktor Krum was in Durmstrang._

_A Goblet of Fire was placed in front of the teachers table in the Great Hall. Headmaster Dumbledore explained that students from each school would put their names into the Goblet and, when the time came, it would choose the three Champions. Unfortunately, only students aged seventeen could enter and Dumbledore put an Age Line around the Goblet to assure this._

_Bored without Sandy, Fred and George cooked up another scheme to try and get past this Age Line. Despite the insistence of Hermione that it would not work, the boys pushed on with their plan (Fred seemed especially keen to prove her wrong). Amazingly, they made it over the Line and managed to put their names in the Goblet. At first, things appeared calm and they celebrated, but then blue fire struck and threw them through the air. When they hit the ground moments later, they sat up and realized they had aged about 30 or 40 years and had grown beards. They laughed it off, but had to go to the hospital wing so that Madame Pomfrey could turn them back to normal._

_On their way, they ran into Sandy, who had just finished another lesson and had not been in the Great Hal to witness their failure. She stared quietly between the two of them for a moment before she burst out laughing. "You tried to cross the Age Line, didn't you?" She knew them all too well by now._

_Temporarily reunited when Sandy took a break from lessons, the three of them sat together when the Goblet finally picked the three competitors. Cedric Diggory, a seventh-year Hufflepuff who had used the same PortKey with his father as the Weasleys and their friends when they went to the Quidditch Cup was for Hogwarts. __Fleur Delacour__ was chosen for __Beauxbatons__ and Viktor Krum (of course) for Durmstrang._

_A fourth name suddenly spouted from the Goblet… Someone had put Harry's name into the Fire under another school. The new D.A.D.A. teacher, retired Auror "Mad-Eye Moody" insisted they let the Boy Wonder compete, despite the protests from the Heads of the other schools._

_Harry's entrance into the Tournament strained his friendship with Ron and the two split into two encampments. Hermione, unsurprisingly, sided with Harry, but tried her best to remain civil with both, as did the twins. Sandy tried her best to do this as well. Things suddenly got hairier when Harry abruptly developed a crush on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team's Seeker, Cho Chang. Sandy, still harboring her own crush on Harry, became angry with him and sided with Ron, though she refused to tell Harry the exact reason why. This, unfortunately, put her at odds with Fred and George's neutral status in the quarrel between brother and friend and she refused to speak to them for a bit. She and Ron became two of many students to shun Harry, as they thought he cheated to get in the competition._

_The Tournament's first challenge pitted the Champions against their own, singular dragons. By "luck of the draw," Harry got stuck with a violent __Hungarian Horntail__. He escaped by using a clever spell to summon his FireBolt broomstick and used a Quidditch move to claim his prize and clue to the next challenge. Ron and Sandy, who then realized the true dangers of the Tournament, reconciled with Harry, along with most of the school (except for, of course, Slytherin). In turn, Sandy also made-up with the twins, who welcomed her back with a customary prank._

_The Yule Ball approached quickly. Both Ron and Harry hade trouble finding dates. When Sandy found out, much to her chagrin, that Harry asked Cho, she bitterly insisted that she probably would not go at all, even when she heard that Harry was rejected. Ron tactlessly tried to invite Hermione, but, to all the Gryffindors' shock, she was already going with someone else. Not only was Ron perturbed by this, but Fred seemed absolutely horrified that Hermione was going with this "mystery guy," despite that he himself had already asked Angelina Johnson, a chaser teammate on their Quidditch team, to be his date. Harry, resourceful Boy Wonder, finally got them dates by talking to Parvati Patil and her twin sister, Padma._

_George, though he wanted to go, didn't expect to find a date in time. He was appalled when Fred and Lee Jordan, their best friend, suggested he ask Sandy, as she was down about not getting to go, too. He reluctantly agreed, but every time he tried to propose his offer, he became tongue-tied. It was like she suddenly became this terrifying monster and he began trying to avoid her while still simultaneously attempting to ask her out. It at last took both Lee _and _Fred to literally push him into Sandy in the hallway between classes for George to finally get the courage to ask her to the ball. To his utter delight (and relief) she accepted with a smile._

_The night arrived all too soon. To everyone's astonishment (and Ron's fury), Hermione's date turned out to be Viktor Crum. To George's surprise and worry, Fred seemed disappointed with this development as well, but he refused to divulge as to why and played it off like he was still excited to go with Angelina._

_George himself was panicking as he waited in the Entrance Hall by the main staircase. He paced relentlessly, but did not have to wait long when she suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. She was a vision of beauty and perfection in robes of sparkly orange and purple - the dress underneath was purple and black. She'd traded in her blood red hair color for her natural auburn (to George's content), but had died the ends a beautiful iris purple and someone (most likely Hermione) had helped her to lightly curl it. And when she smiled, the room brightened a fraction._

_When she came down and greeted him, George presented her with a gorgeous silver-chained necklace adorned with a tiger's-eyed jewel as a pendant. He explained it was a thank-you for coming to the ball with him. To his embarrassment, she kissed him on the cheek for it and stated that she'd wear it always, which was a promise she made good on. He had no idea how appropriate his gift was and wouldn't until the year after._

_He was surprised at her dancing skills and she said he himself was not too shabby. They joked like always and they soon forgot how awkward it was to be two friends on a formal date and just ran with it. They stayed next to Fred and Angelina most of the time (though Fred seemed to be trying his damnedest to steer their group closer to Hermione and Viktor Krum). Once the ball began to wind down, they all snuck on to the roof, ignoring the icy conditions, and just watched the stars. Fred eventually dragged Angelina off somewhere to snog her silly, but George and Sandy, both wrapped and cuddling in George's dress robes, ended up dozing off against a wall and didn't wake until well a half-hour later when their horny companions came back._

_She stayed with the twins during the next competition, as both Ron and Hermione had disappeared on her. To their surprises, they were part of the challenge itself. Harry had to save "what he'd miss the most" (Ron) from the lake. Apparently, Hermione was Viktor's loved one (much to Fred's annoyance). Fleur was injured during the competition and Harry, misunderstanding that Fleur's hostage (her sister) would not be left underwater, rescued her as well, earning himself extra points for valor and bravery._

_Another problem showed up in Rita Skeeter, a gossip columnist for the "Daily Prophet," the wizard newspaper. She reported that Hermione was toying with the affections of Harry and Viktor, upsetting Hermione (and, thus, Fred as well), but the bookworm Muggle-born became curious as to how Skeeter was getting all of the slanderous information she had been putting in the "Prophet" all year. She later found out that Rita was an unregistered Animagus and used this to her advantage._

_The final task finally came (it was a hedge maze) and it took a hell of a lot longer than anyone expected. Sandy worriedly told her friends about her misgivings about how long it has been since the start. When Harry suddenly fell out of the sky with a dead Cedric next to him, it was clear something was _very _wrong. It was confirmed when Harry revealed that Voldemort had returned and Prof. Moody was unveiled as a fake (the real Moody had been held prisoner all year). A memorial service was held for Cedric and Dumbledore reinstated the group of wizards opposing Voldemort, the Order of the Phoenix._

_Before they returned home, Fred and George became annoyed because Ludo Bagman from the Quidditch Cup never paid his loser's debt. Fred had thought about blackmailing him, but George and Sandy insisted he stay away from this method. When Harry "won" the Tournament, he gave up his earnings to help the twins start their joke shop. The twins were forever in his debt._

_ That summer, the Weasleys relocated to #12 Grimmauld Place, Sirius Black's home and the temporary headquarters of the new Order of the Phoenix. To their delight, Hermione and Sandy eventually came as well. They all hung out as normally as they would at school, the twins entertaining their guests by Apparating all over the house to frighten their mother to death. They were once again there to see Hermione fix up Sandy's hair. This time, she traded in the all-around blood-red for blood-red streaks instead. George thought she looks appropriately like a tiger._

_Harry arrived a little later under a heavy guard with the horrible news that he had been expelled from Hogwarts after using under-aged magic to save his fat cousin from some rogue Dementors. He was forced to go to a hearing, so the Ministry could decide whether or not to break his wand. Luckily, the jury voted in his favor and his place at school was preserved._

_While at #12, the young wizards were introduced to some of the members of the order. There was Kingsley Shacklebolt, a dark-skinned wizard that worked for the Ministry, but was loyal to Dumbledore. The _real _Alastor Moody was there, as was his lovely lady apprentice Nymphadora Tonks (Just Tonks, or she'd have _killed _you) who was a __Metamorphmagus__ (a person who could change their body appearance at will). She and the girls (including Sandy) became quite close in the weeks they spent together. Next was Remus Lupin, who had been the acting D.A.D.A. teacher Harry & co.'s third year at school._

_The last two members were Sirius Black (Fred and George finally learned that the reason for Sandy's interest in becoming an Animagus was because she, Harry, and Hermione had been the ones to help Black escape their third year and Sandy was fascinated to learn of the convict's dog form) and Shepherd Swan, who had been Black's school sweetheart and wanted to fight as she had not gotten to in the First Wizarding War. As Shepherd was also a registered Animagus (a collie dog), Sandy took an immediate and even bigger shine to her than to Tonks. The two became almost like surrogate mother and daughter to one another. Harry became rather fond of her as well, hoping the woman would be able to reign in his reckless godfather should things go _that _way for them in the end._

_The kids went in for the school year (Sandy's 5__th__ and the twins' 7__th__), where Ron and Hermione were made Prefects (Ron was teased mercilessly, while Fred's actions and behavior towards Hermione got even stranger). To everyone's surprise, the new D.A.D.A. teacher was __Dolores Umbridge__, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and who was at Harry's hearing. During their first lesson, they discovered that Umbridge refused to teach real defense methods and that they would not be performing any spells, only learning Ministry-approved theory (learning in a "risk-free way"). It became clear she was really there to spy on and take control of the school and was soon appointed __High Inquisitor__, arbitrarily imposing rules and regulations (known as "Educational Decrees"). She also harbored racial hatred for "half-breeds", such as __centaurs__, __werewolves__ and similar creatures (which was not good for Hagrid, who was half giant)._

_Later on, Harry had disturbing dreams where he was trying to find a way into the Department of Magical Mysteries at the Ministry and even one where Ron, Fred, and George's father was being attacked by Harry himself as a snake. When the latter dreams turned out to be real, Harry got spooked and told Dumbledore, which resulted in private lessons from Snape in __Occlumency__ (A spell to block out mind-readers). Their mutual animosity towards each other, however, brought this to a halt._

_Thankfully, however, Mr. Weasley was not seriously hurt enough to die from his injuries._

_Eventually, Hermione convinced Harry to secretly teach students Defense Against the Dark Arts, which he agreed to, albeit reluctantly. To Sandy's delight, the twins and Ginny all joined, but to her disappointment, so did Cho Chang. They named the group "Dumbledore's Army," or D.A. for short, to mock the Ministry. The lessons were, for lack of a better word, incredible. Harry was a surprisingly natural teacher._

_Unfortunately, around Christmas holidays, Harry finally got his wish to kiss Cho and they began a relationship soon after. Sandy, thoroughly upset by this, actually slapped Harry across the face and refused to talk to him for most of the break. Fred and George had never seen her so depressed and were silently worried that she might not come out of it. __Subsequently__,__ once Fred had a long talk with her, she at last came to her senses and she, after fours years of chasing an unrequited love, let go of any hope of getting together with Harry. They reconciled peacefully when school started back._

_D.A. meetings started up again. One lesson was about Animagi, in which Harry asked Sandy to demonstrate what McGonagall and Ms. Swan had taught her. Sandy, understandably nervous about transforming in front of an audience, looked to her twins as support. Fred and George quietly encouraged her, to which she nodded and, after a couple of bungles, finally transformed into a gorgeous orange tigress with blood-red stripes percolating between auburned ones. Fred and especially George were amazed by what she had been able to accomplish in only a short year of private and unofficial lessons._

_On the day they began Patronus charms (Sandy's turned out to be a tiger, mimicking her Animagus form. George's was a squirrel and Fred's a lively spider monkey), it was to the horror of everyone in the Room of Requirement that Umbridge and her Slytherin helpers finally uncovered the meetings. Cho Chang's "friend," __Marietta Edgecombe__, had squealed on them. Dumbledore took the rap, however, and escaped before anyone could catch him. With him gone, though, Umbridge was free to appoint herself Headmistress, much to the disgruntlement of the students._

_And, needless to say, this was also the end of Cho and Harry's brief item-ship._

_Finally fed up with the whole thing, the twins began a revolt, causing mayhem and a lot of damages to the school, with everyone, including most of the staff (_excluding_ Filch), backing them up. Sandy even participated in a few of their hijinx and had come up with a few herself. After awhile, when Umbridge still hadn't gotten the message (the bitch had kicked them and Harry off of the Quidditch team, for Merlin's sake!), Fred and George came to the life-changing conclusion that their time at school had drawn to a close._

_They told Sandy the night before, hinting at maybe her coming along with them. Sandy had just shaken her head and drew her boys into the biggest hug she could manage. "Good luck, mates." She said, kissing each one on their cheek. "I love the snot out of you both and I owe you everything." George never thought something so humorous could sound so heart-breaking at the same time. Neither one could even let out a single laugh as they walked up to Gryffindor tower together for the last time._

_The next day, as fifth years were taking exams, Fred and George blew them away with a fireworks display while flying through the Great Hall on their broomsticks. Once they had run empty, they zoomed out with a parting shout from Fred toward Hogwarts's resident poltergeist. "Give her _hell _from us, Peeves!"_

_As they flew up higher into the sky, George took a passing glance back at the place that had been like a second home for nigh on seven years. No matter what he or Fred had said about it, they had loved the old place and wordlessly agreed they would miss it and everyone there (except Umbridge, of course). His heart had then leapt in his throat when he realized that he would definitely miss Cassandra the most…_

_

* * *

_

_ They didn't see or hear from her for the rest of that year. They secretly packed all of their stuff from #12 Grimmauld Place and then swung by the Burrow to empty everything they'd need out of their bedroom that they had long grown too big for. Using the money given to them by Harry, they bought the perfect building for their shop with a flat in the attic and, at last, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was up and running._

_It wasn't until a few weeks into the summer holidays when they finally got a letter from Sandy via owl post. She informed them of the joyous sacking of Dolorous Umbridge, the return of Dumbledore, the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, _and_ the unfortunate death of Sirius Black. She spoke of both Harry's and Shepherd's depression at this loss. She was the first to inform them of Voldemort's rebirth… She then went on to say that both she and Hermione would go to stay at the Burrow once they had spent some quality time with their families. She concluded the letter by asking if she could sleep in their old bedroom, as she missed them like crazy and being in there might lessen the sadness and pain she always felt without them now. They immediately wrote back, granting her their permission._

_The Golden Quartet (plus Ginny) stopped by during the last days of summer when the remainder of the Weasley clan came through Diagon Ally for school supplies. Sandy instantly went to find them and (with her hair growing long and now dyed black with orange streaks in the reversed version of a tiger's fur coat) jumped right into George's arms. When Fred, faking his anger, asked why he didn't get the first hug _this_ time, Sandy just smiled brightly and said, "You should know by now that I _enjoy_ pissing you off, Frederick Weasley." George could not quell the swoop in his stomach at those words._

_They showed the younger wizards around the shop, refusing Harry's money and ticking Ron off because they forced him to pay, despite the cry of, "But I'm your _brother_!" And Fred's strange behavior around Hermione once again reared it's ugly head when he caught her and Ginny looking at love potions and Patented Daydream Charms. His face suddenly glowed when Hermione called the Charms "Extraordinary Magic" and he impulsively gave her one for free. George could tell by Hermione's own expression that she'd by now at least _picked up _on Fred's odd antics towards her and returned them maybe a quarter of the time. *_Interesting development_…* He had thought to himself at this._

_The twins also got nosy about the rumor of Ginny fancying Dean Thomas, a fellow Gryffindor in Sandy's year. Their equally red-headed sister just stuck up her nose and insisted it was none of their business. Harry watched the whole exchange with wide, confused eyes. ..Or was that jealousy in those green orbs?_

_All too soon, the five of them had to leave and the only information they received about anything going on at the school was from Sandy's almost weekly letters. They learned everything from Harry's new found suspicions about Malfoy now being a Death Eater (which didn't surprise them) , despite Hermione's misgivings, to Snape getting the position of D.A.D.A. teacher, something he had wanted for forever, and Horace Slughorn's reinstatement as Potions Master. They learned of Harry's sudden reciprocated feelings for Ginny and his humorous jealousy over her relationship with Dean Thomas. Ron got to be made Keeper of the Quidditch team, Harry the Captain/Seeker and Ginny a Chaser. Sandy also spoke of the incident with Katie Bell being Imperiused into trying to bring in a cursed necklace for Dumbledore himself. They learned of Ron and Lavender Brown (another Gryffindor in the Quartet's year) forming an item, causing Hermione's heart to break (and Fred to accidently blurt out that he'd kill Ron the next time they saw him). They learned of Harry's disturbing obsession with his potions text book and its previous owner, the "Half-Blood Prince." She told them of Harry's private lessons with Dumbledore and how worried she was getting about the entire thing. Amongst all of the doom, gloom, and drama, Fred and George did have a good laugh at her opinion of their older brother, Bill's, engagement to Fleur Delacour (or "Phlegm," as Ginny preferred to call her), something that had been to the annoyance of Mrs. Weasley._

_George was always the one to read the letters aloud, as Fred had a strict" little-to-no reading rule" in his own little world. He had read and reread them all a couple of times over. With every passing week and with each new letter, he began to realize how much he missed her tagging along behind them, missed wishing she'd just leave her hair the gorgeous color it was, missed her laugh, missed her bright smile and inquisitive honey eyes. He even missed all of her black, Muggle clothing she never seemed to get tired of wearing. Fred began to make fun of him whenever George would start wondering out loud to himself about her well-being, saying he'd fallen in love with "Their Little Tigress." George usually shrugged the teasing off, but he'd begun to question if Fred was on to something…_

_He was ecstatic to see her at the Burrow when Christmas came around once again. Her parents had taken the opportunity to go visit her step-brother, who went to school in America. She had hugged Fred first this time upon arriving out of pure politeness, but when she saw George, she squealed and promptly knocked him over. Harry had come to stay as well, but Hermione had gone to her own family, as she was still upset with Ron over his link with Lavender. Fred, though he tried hard not to show it, was clearly unhappy about this. George and Sandy later secretly went through his stuff (out of pure concern for him, of course) and found out that he had been writing to Hermione to ask after her well-being. Miraculously, however, the letters revealed nothing as to the reason for Fred's abnormal behavior towards Hermione in the past, two years and Hermione's answers were of little help, either._

_A couple of days before the four had to return to school, Remus Lupin, Tonks, and Ms. Swan all arrived and talked over situations at Hogwarts with Mr. Weasley and Harry. After some brief quarreling between Harry and Lupin, the three Order members began to leave, but discovered that Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange and the werewolf Fenrir Grayback (who had recently escaped Azkaban) had lead a small troupe to the Burrow to attempt to kidnap Harry. As Harry, Lupin, Tonks, Shepherd, Mr. Weasley, and Ginny (in a bathrobe) all ran out to chase off the Death Eaters, George ran to find Sandy, who had gone upstairs before the commotion started. Once he had her, they began to head down the twisted staircase again, when the Burrow immediately caught fire. Had it not been for the quick actions of Mr. Weasley, Lupin, Tonks, and Ms. Swan with their Augimenti spells, the Burrow would've been destroyed with George and Sandy inside…_

_Sandy returned to Hogwarts with Harry, Ron, and Ginny and the twins returned to their flat above the shop, now determined more than ever to be the bright spot in people's lives in the face of the war sure to come. They once again had to be content with only getting information by Sandy's letters. They learned of Ginny's break-up with Dean and the Gryffindor Quidditch win that finally brought her and Harry together. Sandy assured the twins that she was happy for the both of them. She told them of Ron's unfortunate poisoning and his subsequent break-up with Lavender after he called for Hermione in his sleep. When Ron awoke, he and Hermione reconciled and their obvious attraction for one another at last became evident (Fred got up and stalked out of the room when George read this letter), though they weren't in a serious relationship, as of yet._

_And it was from Sandy that they had learned when and how Dumbledore had died. Of how Harry's suspicions about Malfoy were true and that he really _was_ Voldemort's new Death Eater. About the Death Eaters that invaded Hogwarts through the Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement, which led to the Battle of the Astronomy Tower and (this one hit home to them) how Bill was in St. Mungo's for treatment of werewolf bites. How Snape was the one to be their former Headmaster's murderer in the end._

_When they saw her at the funeral, she looked absolutely dreadful. Black tears from her make-up streamed down her face and she apparently hadn't slept for awhile. When she spotted them, there was no running to jump into their arms or teasing about who got embraced first. All she did was stand shakily to her feet from her chair, walk over to them, and throw her hands around them in furious sadness, crying her eyes out into George's chest while Fred had soothingly stroked her hair. After a few moments, George then felt a stab of bravery hit him and he had lifted her chin up to make her face him. Her eyes were red and puffy and the smeared eyeliner from her face had gotten on his suit, but he didn't care. All he did was smile at her, bend to kiss her cheek, and then whispered in her ear, "You look gorgeous, pet." Sandy immediately stopped crying at the compliment and George knew instantly that Fred had been right about his developing feelings for her._

_She sat in between them and held their hands on her knees during the ceremony, one on each side. Despite having a firm grip on both, the way she kept rubbing her thumb softly over George's scaly knuckles made it clear to him that things between them had just changed forever…_

_

* * *

_

_ George, Fred, Sandy, Hermione, Ron, Fleur, and a thief named Mundunus Fletcher who, kind of surprisingly, belonged in the Order, all flew to Harry's house right at the end of July with the other Order members with a plan in mind to sneak Harry away from his aunt and uncle's house (who had already been relocated to a safe hideaway with Phoenix Wizards __Dedalus Diggle__ and Hestia Jones). This was to help Harry avoid capture by Voldemort. All seven of them drank Polyjuice Potion (a potion that can literally turn a person into someone else), so that they could look like him and act as his decoys. The whole thing was somewhat bizarre with eight Harrys milling around the Muggle kitchen. If it had been that odd for George, he couldn't imagine what it was like for the _real_ Harry to see himself duplicated seven times over._

_Once they were all disguised and ready, they all went out into the front yard to mount up on whatever they came in on with their partners. The original Harry was paired with Hagrid on a motorbike that had been given to him by Sirius Black years before. The other pairs were as followed: Mundungus Fletcher with Mad-Eye Moody, Fred with Mr. Weasley, his father, Ron with Tonks (something he didn't seem too happy about) Sandy with Ms. Swan, and George himself with Remus Lupin all on brooms. Fleur was to go with Bill (of course) on a Threstral (a black, skeletal horse with wings that had pulled the transport carriages at Hogwarts and was invisible except to people who've seen death) and Hermione with Kingsley on the other Threstral - George couldn't help but notice that the Harry with his dad was gazing longingly toward the Harry next to the dark-skinned Kingsley when the pairs were all assigned._

_Harry/George barely got to share his own look with Harry/Sandy before they were all taking off. Just as they had gotten into the air, they were suddenly surrounded by Death Eaters. George could barely be sickly surprised before Lupin was flying them away from there at top speed and the two of them quickly lost sight of the others. They were hastily closed in on all sides by at least five or six Eaters. George whipped out his wand and, together with Lupin, began an amazingly hard fight for their lives._

_And George thought they had been doing a fairly decent job of it, too. Thanks to Harry's D.A. teachings, George managed to expertly stun a Death Eater right off of his broom and Lupin, sitting up front, had taken care of two more. The red-haired man didn't have time to be impressed, for, yet, another cloak-covered Voldemort lackey had come up behind them. George, not wasting a minute, immediately shot an extra stunning spell. The white light from his wand missed hitting the Death Eater's face by mere inches, catching on the edge of his hood instead and knocking it off of his head. George was horrified when he locked sights with his old potions professor, Severus Snape._

_Snape, however, seemed more in control of his emotions and didn't bat an eye at the fact that he had just been exposed. His dark orbs didn't even seem to be focused on George; rather, he was glaring off to the right. George gritted his teeth and decided to attack while Dumbledore's murderer was distracted. Before he could raise his wand, however, Snape roared at the top of his lungs and shot a Sectumsempra spell at George's shoulder._

_George couldn't have gotten out of the way in time, else he would have pushed Lupin off and out into the open air. The bolt Snape sent grazed close by his cheek and hit his right ear. It was like someone had suddenly drilled a hole into George's head and stuck a faucet there. The blood gushed out everywhere and George was randomly reminded of the red hair dye Sandy had once used as consciousness started to fail him. It was all he could do to clutch quickly on to Reamus's robes before he was blacking out from the pain and falling forward…_

_His hearing returned before anything else did, but all he really could make-out were frantic mumblings that were muted when they got around to his right. He was pretty sure he could discern who-was-who, though. He knew his mother's voice anywhere – bless the woman – she was tending to him like she would always do when any of her children fell ill back when they were younger and things had been so much less complicated. Ginny was near his feet, he was sure, speaking to Molly about who was back and who was not. It took George a minute to swim through the fog to understand what she meant, but then immediately thought of Sandy and Fred when he did. He could hear Harry Potter (the _genuine_ one), Lupin, Kingsley, Hermione, and Hagrid's voice somewhere in the room around him – whatever room it _was_._

_He'd tried to move, but his muscle power had not come like his ability to hear had. He felt comfortable at least; the cushions that supported him never felt so good and he wanted to pass out again without alerting anyone that he had been awake at all. He tasted copper and his head felt as if someone whacked him with a sledge hammer. He just wished to sleep the night away._

_A crash had come from the direction of the kitchen (he thought). "I'll prove who I am, Kingsley, _after _I've seen my son, now back off if you know what's good for you!" His father and Fred had safely returned, to George's quiet relief. He heard as they came into the room where he was. His father knelt beside him, while his twin went around the back of whatever it was he was laying on. Figuring he owed them all some sign of life, George stirred, but paused when another crash from the kitchen sounded, as if someone had blown the back door of it's hinges._

"_Out of the way, Harry!" It was Sandy. "Let me see…" She trailed off and George figured she must have entered the room. He felt her kneel down beside his father next to him, felt her take his hand and raise it to her lips to kiss it. He stirred again and slipped his fingers from of hers to grope for the side of his head. When his mother asked how he felt, he answered with, "Saintlike." He knew he had the right reaction when Fred spoke, panicking._

"_What's wrong with him? Is his mind affected?" He had inquired, sounding terrified. George'd opened his eyes then, gazing up at his brother._

"_Saintlike." He'd repeated. "You see…I'm holy. _Holey_, Fred, geddit?" He grinned when he felt Sandy swat his bloody shoulder in brief anger, but he kept his eyes on his brother, whose face had regained its color and was now smiling back at him._

"_Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humor before you, you go for _holey_?" Fred had told him, looking just as relieved as everyone else. George just shrugged and turned to his mother, who was sobbing._

"_You'll be able to tell us apart now, anyway, Mum." He said to her as he'd looked down at Sandy last. "Hey there, love…" Was the only thing he'd managed to say before she'd thrown herself at him, not caring about the blood that stuck to her skin, clothes, and hair as she'd sobbed with relief into his neck._

_Ron, Tonks Bill, and Fleur returned alive not long after this. Bill was the one to inform them of Mad-Eye's untimely demise. They all toasted their fallen friend with glasses filled with fire whiskey._

_The Weasley's were told of the impending drop-outs from Hogwarts by the troupe of 17-year-olds after Albus Dumbledore's funeral, so they all knew that, eventually, Harry and his friends would want to leave and start their quest as soon as possible. George was devastated inside when Sandy had informed him and Fred of her plans to join the other three on the perilous journey. He knew Fred was gloomy about it, too (though George had the distinct suspicion that his worry was more on Hermione's part than anyone else's). For most of their time spent at the Burrow, though, the Quartet was kept busy with preparations for Bill and Fleur's wedding. George, being a bad boy one night, eavesdropped on Harry telling the other three that he suspected the chores were an attempt by Mrs. Weasley to delay them from leaving. As far as the twins could tell, however, the four were still able to get together and discuss their agendas for their mission._

_On Harry's 17__th__ birthday (the day before the wedding), the new __Minister for Magic__, __Rufus Scrimgeour,__ arrived at the Burrow to give the Quartet some personal effects of Dumbledore's, to which he left them in his will. To Ron, a Deluminator with the power to douse all lights in the surrounding area; to Hermione, __The Tales of Beedle the Bard__, a book of wizard-culture fairy tales; to Sandy, a beautiful, antique __Sneakoscope (a Dark Detector that looked like a spinning top and lit up when someone untrustworthy was near)__; to Harry, the first __Golden Snitch__ he'd had ever caught in a Hogwarts __Quidditch__ match and, most impressive of all, Godric Gryffindor's (one of the four founders of Hogwarts) sword. The Ministry had kept the sword, however - Scrimgeour giving the bogus excuse that it was not Dumbledore's to give._

_The twins, who, despite all things, knew when it was the time _not_ to listen in on a conversation, did the honorable thing and sat outside with the rest of the extended family at Harry's dinner party until the four of them and the Minister all came out of the Burrow and the grizzle-haired Scrimgeour took his leave. George bent over to Sandy, who was seated next to him, and inquired as to what went on. She gave him a scolding side-glance that could rival his mother's. "Just legal matters, George. Nothing to be concerned about." She'd told him, sipping her tea to avoid having to say anymore. Though it was not the first instance when Sandy had refused to divulge juicy information to him, George had been hurt nonetheless, which _was_ a first whereas the two of them were concerned._

_He quickly got over it when he'd suddenly felt her tweak his elbow. When he had glanced at her, she flicked a gaze to the space under the table and back, which meant she wanted him to look. She showed him a flash of the Sneakoscope (made of clear glass material with gold accents and miniature pictures of gold animals in a running sequence dotted around it), but not a thing more. When George prodded about it, she'd put a finger to her lips, smiled, and winked._

_The Minister's visit was forgotten in light of the events of the following morning: Bill and Fleur's wedding. The Weasley's weren't going to take any chances with Harry, however, and disguised him a__s a distant "cousin" named Barny to avoid an uproar, as he was now the most wanted wizard in all of Britain. Things went quietly at first. The lovebirds were married and the dancing commenced nicely. Fred, being a self-proclaimed "ladies man," flirted with some of the bride's cousins (though, George noted, he still threw gazes over at Hermione glued to Ron's side from time-to-time)._

_George, having become an old hat at it, invited Sandy to be his date once more, to which she agreed to while poking fun at the irony of them getting stuck together again.__ George found he didn't mind this when he laid his eyes on her in her gorgeous, tiered dress robes the color of wisteria flowers. Her hair had at last returned to its fully natural auburn, grown long, and was once again slightly curled. And the tiger's eye necklace still hung around her throat as on the night he gave it to her._

_They joked while they danced, just as they had at the Yule Ball, but, somehow, everything felt…_different_. The air around them had a distinct electric charge and George had an inkling that it definitely was _not _just because they were tightly knit on the magically-produced dance floor with the other guests attending the festivities. Any exposed skin of his tingled all too pleasantly every time it touched hers and, by the heady look in her eyes, she had been experiencing the same thing._

_They would have shared their first kiss on _that _day…if Kingsley's Patronus had not had such extraordinarily bad timing._

_A silvery lynx separated the crowd and drove them to quiet. It strolled right to Authur Weasley, opened its mouth, and, speaking in Shacklebolt's voice, informed the partygoers that Voldemort had taken over the Ministry of Magic, Death Eaters were on the way, and that Rufus Scrimgeour was dead._

_Hermione pushed through the hysteric chaos that'd followed the announcement and grabbed Sandy away from George, pulling her by the hand to go locate "Barny" and Ronald, who had left her alone to go stuff himself at the buffet table before the ruckus had begun. She only had enough seconds to look back at him once before a large man with the familiar Weasley red hair blocked her from his view. George, without having a care of being polite anymore, began pushing people out of the way to follow, as if hoping to get one last glimpse of her prior to her departure and she left him for good for Merlin-knows-how-long._

_He got his wish, but only for a few dastardly milliseconds before she and the other three Side-Along Apparated and were gone in the blink of an eye. It was the last time he would be seeing her for almost an entire year._

_And they were the most _horrible _nine months George had ever had in his whole life! Not only did business at WWW drop because of lack of customers (either because they were in hiding or too scared to even walk out their own doors), but around the turn of the seasons, when autumn was changing to winter, the shop was attacked and ransacked by Death Eaters… Or, at least, that's what he and Fred had heard. _

_It was surprisingly Fred who'd decided to head for their Auntie Muriel's first, but it took only moments for George to agree and they'd quickly packed. Once there, however, they sent an owl to their suppliers to let them know where they'd gone and they still got their deliveries, much to their Auntie's chagrin. It was around the Easter holidays when the other Weasley's (other than Bill) came; Ginny included. Their little clan had been lucky to escape unharmed from interrogation by the Death Eaters that crashed the wedding, but, somehow, the ministry had discovered Ron's accompaniment of Harry, Hermione, and Sandy and they had to abandon the Burrow._

_From their sister, they were info__rmed of the going-on at school. As part of the new Ministry's regime, Hogwarts attendance became mandatory and __Muggle-borns__ were being rounded up. Once she had arrived, Ginny joined up with __Neville Longbottom__ and __Luna Lovegood__ (a Ravenclaw girl who was a mutual friend between them and the Quartet) to restart the __D.A.__ and defy Snape's regime. They openly ignored authority (something that made the twins puff up with pride towards her) and snuck out at night painting graffiti on the walls of the corridors – _**Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting**_. On one occasion, they attempted to steal __Godric Gryffindor's Sword__ from __Snape's office__, but were caught and punished. Ginny served detention with __Hagrid__ in the Forbidden Forest, and was banned from all trips to __Hogsmeade__ (as if it was a big deal at this point). Ginny and Neville were left to lead the D.A. without Luna after she was abducted by Death Eaters over the Christmas holidays._

_It was hearing about all of the injustice being done at their former haunt that Fred and George decided to join in "Potterwatch," a rogue wizard radio broadcast that reported on what was really going on throughout the wizarding world of Britain. The station was run by their school friend Lee Jordan, who greeted them excitedly when they showed up. Together with others of the Order, such as Lupin and Kingsley, they supplied information to the wizarding world that the now Voldemort-controlled Ministry would definitely not, sent supportive messages to Harry and others openly opposing the Dark Wizard's activities, announced deaths, and encouraged witches and wizards to protect Muggle neighbors. They did their best to discourage the climate of panic that the new Ministry promoted to help control the populace by spreading truth. They had to take safety measures, of course, such as switching locations and using codenames (George had shaken his head at Fred wanting to change his to Rapier instead of having Rodent) to avoid Death Eaters. It was a good way to have a bit of fun with everything else being so dire. It made the twins' spirits brighten a little, despite knowing what would happen should they all get caught._

_Surprisingly, amidst all of the terror of war, there was a bit of good news. A little before the relocation of Harry from his relatives' house to the Burrow, Lupin and Tonks had gotten engaged and married in a small ceremony they could not (sadly) invite the Boy Who Lived to. Nine months later produced a healthy baby boy that (to Reamus's intense relief) did not inherit his werewolfishness, but rather his mother's Metamorphmagus talents._

_Lupin came by their Auntie Muriel's one blustery night to give the good news. Not only that, but he also admitted to making Harry the godfather of his son. At hearing the information of Harry and company safe at their brother Bill's cottage that he shared with Fleur, the twins, amongst the joy from the rest of their family at finally hearing some _good _things, nonchalantly asked Remus how their friends were holding up (George himself was more interested in Sandy's well-being, but he wasn't ignorant to what – or who – Fred was wanting to know about). They were both relieved to hear that the Quartet was doing just fine, especially after spending a few weeks recuperating at the cottage. Reamus warned them, however, that he didn't expect the younger wizards to be there for long and suggested firmly that everyone prayed for them. George and Fred agreed heartily to this._

_In spite of all of the successful rebellion the Weasley's dished out against the enemy, there were definitely times when they had to endure nerve-wracking waits. They had to wait for news; Fred and George had to wait in trepidation for their supplies to be delivered unhindered; they had to wait with poor Ginny while she cried herself to sleep over worry about Harry and the others; they had wait for the end of their mother's fretting spells as their father followed her around the house to make sure she didn't do anything rash, like go off after the heroic troupe of junior wizards. Sometimes it got so heated in Muriel's house, rows were more-often-than not the outcome of all of the tension built up over the past months; even for the twins, who'd rarely ever fought a day in their lives. Though they'd always make-up after these fall-outs, George'd known the pressure was getting to all of them and the agony of knowing what lay around the corner, no matter what anyone had said to the contrary, was scaring them shitless._

_The sun was just going down on the evening of May 1__st__ when it happened. The fake Galleons that Hermione Granger had bewitched and given to the D.A. to help all of them keep communication with one another all began to blink and do all sorts of crazy stuff to alert them that Neville Longbottom (who had promised Ginny and Luna he'd call them if the Quartet ever showed up at Hogwarts) needed them to come. The twins and Ginny had turned to each other and, after a second of silence, all unexpectedly grinned._

_The three of them snuck out after dinner and met up with Lee halfway. Once they were together, they traveled to King's Cross under the cover of darkness and boarded the Hogwarts Express, which had mysteriously showed up just a little w__ile earlier, as Cho Chang had informed them when they ran into her. Once as many people had gotten on as there was going to be, the train left the station and made a detour to Hogsmeade and came to a halt to the transfigured Hog Head pub, owned by Dumbledore's younger brother Aberforth, who'd been helping the D.A. all year by letting them come into the pub by a passage behind a portrait of his and Albus's late sister. _

_The three Weasley siblings crawled through this secret entrance and ended up in the Room of Requirement, where they all laid eyes on the Quartet for the first time since the wedding. Harry looked somewhere between wanting to snog Ginny senseless and yell at her for being there where she was in the most danger. Ron's jaw had gone slack and appeared as if he'd have a hell of time connecting it back to his upper lip. Hermione had been stunned into silence. This left Sandy, who, after setting sights on the twins (especially George), had let her own surprised expression crumble and began to sob unabashedly._

_And, as if she were just a silly, little girl again, she launched herself into their arms, making sure she had one arm wrapped around each and hugged them as if she'd never let them go again. George was sure he'd cry, too, if he didn't do something, so he had surveyed her and could see that weeks of travel and a long imprisonment in the Malfoy basement (he'd told himself he'd need to have a chat with the toe-headed git some time in the near future) had taken its toll on her, making her slightly emaciated into something even a small break at Shell Cottage had been unable to fix. Her hair was easily inches longer than it had been the day she and the others left and was extremely matted and dirty. Cuts, bruises, welts, and bumps the size of Muggle golf balls could be seen on the visible skin that the tattered, civilian clothes she wore in place of the wisteria dress robes she had departed in could not cover._

_George had held on to her even after Fred had long letten go, afraid that if he'd broken the embrace, she'd disappear out of his life again and might not come back the second time. And, by the way his twin refused to take his eyes off of Hermione, he knew Fred felt the same way._

_He eventually _did _have to release her shoulders, but they kept their hands tightly entwined as Harry suddenly announced (after one of his many lightning scar-induced seizures) that he'd needed to find something of Rowena Ravenclaw's (another co-founder of Hogwarts), as it might help in the defeat of Voldemort, who was apparently on his way to the school at that very second. Luna Lovegood, who had been imprisoned with Sandy and Dean Thomas in Malfoy Manor, mentioned something about a lost diadem of her House's creator, which prompted Harry into taking her with him under his Invisibility Cloak to head to the Ravenclaw tower to see if it's location was hidden there._

_Shortly after this, following a hushed discussion with Sandy (who still had a death grip on George's fingers, though she kept him out of their huddle), Ron and Hermione left, too, though, for what reason, no one knew. Sandy remained with Fred and George in the Requirement Room as more-and-more people began climbing through the portrait hole, which included both of their parents (Mrs. Weasley was furious with the twins and Ginny for running off in the middle of the night, but was ecstatic to see Sandy alive and crushed her in a hug), Bill and his wife, Lupin, Kingsley, Shepherd, and the original members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team._

_When Harry and Luna arrived back, Lupin hurriedly asked the Boy Wonder (who'd been astonished at the amount of newcomers) what the latest was. After getting over the shock of all of his supporters, Harry informed them that the teachers had all been awakened, were taking their students to the Great Hall, that Snape had been sacked, and Voldemort was on the way, but that they were planning to make a fight of it…_

_The Room of Requirement emptied quite quickly after that. Once everything was clear, the only ones left were the Weasleys, Lupin, Sandy, and Harry. Mrs. Weasley was struggling with Ginny, fighting with her to stay behind because she was under-aged. Harry really didn't want her staying, either, but before the argument could escalate further, Percy Weasley, the third eldest behind Charlie, came tottering through the passage. Percy, who was a stickler for rules, went to work for the Ministry after leaving school. When things in the wizarding world began to go south, his loyalty was tested between his job and family and, for the better part of the last, few years, chose work over kinship. It seemed, as he stumbled out of the portrait hole, that he'd finally come to his senses._

"_I was a fool!" He roared loudly. "I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a…a –"_

"_Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron." Fred had finished for him_

_Percy gulped at this. "Yes, I was."_

_Fred smiled then and had held out his hand. "Well, you can't say fairer than that." He added through the grin._

_The Weasley clan quickly made-up and they exited (except for Ginny and Mrs. Weasley) the Room of Requirement with Sandy in tow, still holding on to George as if for dear life. Harry, Lupin, and Molly came soon after to a packed Great Hall, having left Ginny back in the Room._

_McGonagall and the other professors were trying to bring about order to students and was attempting to inform them of the situation when Voldemort's disembodied voice rang out over the entire dining room._

"_I know you are prepared to fight." He'd said high, cold, and clear amongst the screams of several people. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not wish to kill you…I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."_

_Silence swallowed them all until a girl from Slytherin, naturally (George was pretty sure that her name had been Pantsy or something along those lines), stood up and pointed to Harry. "But he's there! Potter's _there_! Someone grab him!" She'd shouted, but instead of doing that, everyone from the other Houses got up together as one and stood with their backs facing the bespeckled Boy Wonder, drawing out their wands at Miss. Pantsy. George and Sandy stood side-by-side near the front, almost right in the bint's pug face; the tips of their own wands nearly poking her in the nose._

"_Thank-you, Miss. Parkinson." McGonagall'd said in a _very _clipped voice. "You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow." The Slytherins did just that, followed by the under-aged wizards and witches of the remaining Houses._

_Kingsley stepped forward to address and assign battle plans to those left behind. When he came to the openings for someone to organize defenses of the passageways into the school, Fred immediately stood up._

"_Sounds like a job for us." He'd said, gesturing between George and himself. Kingsley nodded his approval and asked for the leaders to come up to help divide the troops. As George made to rise, he'd whipped his head quickly around to Sandy and they looked at each other sadly. Without even saying the words, they knew that it may very well be the last time they saw each other alive. After a few painful, heart-breaking moments, George slipped his fingers away from hers and walked slowly in the footsteps of his brother to the front of the teacher's dining table. Once there, he snapped a glance to gaze at her one last time, but found that both she and Harry had disappeared._

_He and Fred were given their respective groups and they led them to the entrance hall, strolling side-by-side with backs straight and heads held high. As they'd passed through the doors of the Great Hall, the stifled sobs of their mother heard in the background, the twins had turned and faced one another; their faces void of any expression._

"_Well, Gred… This is where we part ways to confront the savages." Fred said evenly, almost a little _too _passively. George, however, just nodded with trepidation._

"_That it is, Forge. That it is…" He replied solemnly, never taking his eyes off his brother's face, as if he'd wanted to ingrain his very image into his brain. Another silence came over the two of them for a second, unwilling to part, but knowing they had a duty to protect their former school and Harry, who could quite possibly save them all._

_After a second or two, Fred gave one of his infamously good-natured smirks and stuck out a hand toward his sibling like he had to Percy earlier._

"_Well, good luck, then, to all of ya." He'd said, raking a look over the somewhat nervous individuals standing behind George and fidgeting in place. "And, hey, George. Maybe once we surf through this hell, we can go snag us a Hogwarts toilet seat as a souvenir?" He added as he'd nudged George in the ribs. George brushed him away, chuckling under his breath, then took Fred's proffered right hand still hanging in the air between them._

"_Sounds like a plan, mate. It'd be like a signal to the whole world that we fought Voldemort and lived to tell the tale. We'd have to beat the admirers and fans off with a stick!" He'd said as their hands pumped up-and-down amid their quiet laughter. Fred then had drawn his back and nonchalantly juggled his wand._

"_Exactly. Meet ya in the girls' second-floor bathroom, brother." He gave his farewell with a salute before tromping up the Grand Staircase with his "soldiers" (which included Angelina Johnson) following in suit._

_George watched them go and didn't take his eyes off of them until he could not make out their shapes any longer. He then took his own miniature posse down a side corridor to the left of the stairwell where he knew of a room containing a secret passage._

_Had George known then that that would be the last time he would ever see his twin breathing, he would have said something along the fences of how he'd loved him deeply and how much he'd always admired him. Courage, humor, and all…_

_Everything became confusing after that. The group he had been commanding put up a great fight and they managed to keep several Death Eaters from entering though that hidden entrance. It was the terrified scream of their female look-out that alerted them to the intruders that had already breeched the castle another way. The next thing he knew, they were all scattered in different directions and George was putting his D.A. training to the ultimate test._

_Blasts everywhere, bodies of students and Death Eaters alike dropping from the floors above, glass breaking from misfired spells, and a werewolf rampaging rampantly down the halls. It was like a horrifying madhouse._

_He thought he saw Ginny once, fighting off an unfamiliar Volde-lacky like an insane banshee, but then she disappeared around a bend. He wasn't surprised that she had probably snuck out of the Room of Requirement, where she was supposed to stay and keep safe. The girl was too much like her older brothers, though. She would never back down from a good, old-fashioned brawl like this. He knew she would be alright._

_Another falling__ body from the balcony he was under landed inches away from him and he thanked his lucky stars that he had not been smooshed under it. Once he'd gotten his breath back, the only thing that would come to his mind was where the _bloody hell_ Cassandra was in all of this…_

_The high, cold voice from before was speaking all around once more, as if it was coming from the walls of the school itself. "You have fought valiantly." It said. "Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet, you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one-by-one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately" As cued, the Death Eaters that were left began to file out the front doors of the castle as if the last hours of battle had not even happened. Where they were going, George had no idea, but he was glad for the break. He was making his way back to the Great Hall when the voice spoke again._

"_You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured. …I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."_

_George walked through the doors of the Great Hall just as Voldemort ended his demands. He was just wondering what exactly Harry was going to do, when he all of a sudden saw the knot of red hair that indicated his family and he ran over to them, never in his life more happy to see them than he had been at that moment. Ginny, cut and bloodied, was there holding their mother, who herself was quite filthy. Their father had a nice gash on his neck and Bill and Fleur were a train wreck - and that wasn't even counting their wounds combined. They all greeted him with relief. The only ones that were not there were Percy and Fred. George decided that they had just not returned yet, not wanting to think the worst right then._

_He witnessed the bodies of Lupin, Tonks (who he'd never recalled entering the fray from the get-go), and Shepherd being carried in. Pangs he never expected to feel at the sight of this tore open his heart and he let the tears flow freely._

_It was his mother dropping to her knees close by his side that he knew something was horribly wrong. He looked in the direction of the Hall doors, where his family members were staring as well, and he spotted the thin frame of Percy limping in. He looked small and frail, despite being young in age, and he, too had gashes up the wahzoo. His interest was not on his third eldest brother, however… It was on the large tigress padding in next to him with the body of a red-haired man slung across her back._

_George went to his knees beside his mother as the Cassandra-tigress lowered herself to allow Bill, his father, and Percy to remove the burden of a very dead Fred from her shoulders. As they gently laid him on his back, she transformed into the auburn-haired girl – no, now she's a woman - he'd known for seven, long years. She was barely recognizable, though; her face was covered in soot and the ends of her hair had been singed as if by some stray fire, shortening it an inch or two. More bumps and bruises were added to the ones she'd accumulated during her travels over the year. And the expression she wore on her face spoke of untold anguish and sorrow._

_She crawled on her hands-and-knees over to him and she embraced him like she'd never had before, even in the Room of Requirement after not seeing either of the twins for so long. Her whole skull was practically buried into his now dirty and tattered clothing and she was sobbing without any sense of control. And all George could do was robotically pat her back as his flooded eyes gazed at his lifeless brother lying under the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall._

_He suddenly could not help thinking how much like looking into a mirror it was. It was eerie and gut-wrenchingly depressing all at the same time._

_When Ron and Hermione abruptly materialized, hand-in-hand, out of the rapidly expanding crowd in the Hall to join the family in mourning, he quite quickly began to feel a little anger at them and Harry (who seemed to have gone AWOL). The two, sickeningly-sweet lovebirds had been missing in action since they'd disappeared from the Room of Requirement before the serious battling had started. Where had they gone? George felt his burning, blue orbs focus a bit angrily on Hermione, recalling all of the looks of admiration and longing and the strange behavior that Fred had displayed around her since their sixth year and, ignoring the fact that it was a tad harsh, was a bit aggravated at her for never _really_ noticing. For some reason he'd not known, the ridiculous notion sprang up in his mind that if she'd at least have acknowledged the fact that something had been up with Fred, then maybe she could have helped him and he'd have lived. She was, after all, "The Brightest Witch of Her Age," was she not?_

_He had been secretly cross at Ron, too. The youngest Weasley had been gallivanting with Hermione, and possibly Harry, all night long. Where was he when Fred had been killed?_

_And what of the Boy Wonder? Where was _he _in George's time of anguish? Did Fred's death mean nothing to that selfish, bespeckled git?_

_Before George could stand up to have some plausibly violent words with the couple in question about theirs and Harry's whereabouts when his poor twin was murdered, he suddenly felt a movement somewhere near his right armpit and he had to avert his blazing gaze downwards to assess what had caused it. When he recognized Sandy as she'd raised her face to wipe at her tears with a cut and unclean hand, all of the animosity flew out of him so hurriedly, it almost shocked him. The antagonized thoughts were then replaced by adoring ones as he unexpectedly realized that he'd never noticed how beautiful she really was. Yes, he had seen her all dressed up on two occasions, but right then, in torn jeans, scuffed boots, disarrayed auburn-hair, and cheeks stained with liquid-trails from her said tears, she had never looked more breath-taking in all of his life._

_Apparently sensing that she was being scrutinized, Sandy had looked up at him with a question in her reddened eyes, but then she balked when she seemingly pinpointed what exactly the expression on his face was. She did not look frightened, but rather curiou__s and inquisitive, searching him with her own honeyed irises._

_George instantly assented to the fact that that look had always turned him on…_

_He would never really be sure who had instigated it first, but he _did _know that he had not stopped himself when he joined her in closing the distance between them. The first touch of lips-on-lips was a little bit of a shock and it'd almost sent George reeling, but he'd held on to Sandy like an anchor in a windy harbor._

_No one had paid them any mind, as they were still too busy crying over Fred's body.__

* * *

_

_ They had won. Harry had killed Voldemort at last and it was finally all over._

_Or, at least, the _fighting _was._

_It had been three days since the last remnants of battle had faded and the amount of bodies and rubble being cleared out of the castle was_ **just**_starting to thin. All of them had volunteered to help clean up, of course, even Harry, despite his hero status. The Boy with the Scar of Lightning got down and dirty with the rest of them, refusing to take special treatment from those who tried to push their assistance on him._

_George and Sandy worked in close quarters those few days. George spoke little, but the auburn-haired young woman did not seem to mind; knowing he needed his time. So, instead, she filled the silence up with stories from the Quartet's travels over the few months they were looking for Horcruxes (George never really understood the whole concept behind these objects that Voldemort hid parts of his soul in. It always made his head spin to hear Sandy try to explain it to him over and-over). When she told him of being imprisoned wit Dean, Luna, Mr. Ollivander the Wandmaker, and a goblin from Gringotts bank named Griphook in Malfoy Manor, he had to give her a crushing embrace, which he tried to put every emotion of protection into to let her know she was now safe, even though she probably already knew she was._

_They had not discussed the kiss they had shared on May 2__nd__ just yet. At first, it was because they were simply too busy trying to help tidy the castle to make way for construction and repair wizards. As time went on, however, the reason became because it was a slightly uncomfortable topic to bring up. They were both secretly ashamed that it had happened right next to the head of a lifeless Fred. George was especially appalled at himself for this, even though he also thought it had been somewhat the right thing, since it _was _Sandy he had shared the lip-lock with. Fred probably wouldn't have minded that they practically made-out right over his blank, staring face._

_*_In fact, he might have enjoyed the show…_* George reasoned sadistically in his mind as he'd helped Cassandra move a particularly hefty piece of rock from where it was blocking the entrance to the thoroughly destroyed Muggle studies classroom._

_It was finally around noon on the sixth of May when the survivors of the battle were all told that they had done as much as they were able to do and alternatively, but begrudgingly, began planning the numerous funerals that were going to happen sooner-or-later. Harry dedicated himself to going to every, single one of them. George admired the younger man for it._

_The official start of the ceremonies was on May 9__th__ and were slated to continue on until perhaps mid-June. The missing were honorably mentioned first, including Alastor Moody, and their spirits were blessed with many prayers. On May 10__th__, Tonks and Lupin were buried and all George could think about was the fact that their son was going to be growing up parentless, just like Harry; but at least he'd be with his grandmother and the Weasley's themselves would always be there for him._

_When it was Shepherd's turn to be buried, Sandy, who'd been a trooper through Lupin's and his wife's funeral, broke down into tears, as if it was just then really hitting her that the woman who she had greatly admired was now gone. George had immediately gone to comfort her, but then she chose that moment to spill out the fact that she and the other three members of the Golden Quartet had been witnesses to Fred's death. At first, George wasn't sure what to think about her words. He then bravely put on a straight face and told her it was in the past and just tried to console her as best as he could as Shepherd's coffin was lowered into the ground._

_Initially, George was surprisingly accepting of the fact that he was not a twin anymore and some of his family members even praised him on how calm he was being about all of it and he'd agreed with them, kind of fearing that if he did not, than it wouldn't be true. And he did his best to keep Sandy in high spirits as well, joking around with her lightly as they'd done in school to help her get her mind off of the gloomy things.  
_

_As the days passed, however, George began to feel less-and-less confident about his position. Thoughts of who'd assist him in getting WWW up-and-running again came to his mind and demanded his attention, especially at night. He soon began to forget to eat and would refuse his mother's well-intentioned insistence that he put food in his belly. _

_And soon, he__ started to notice that he was getting weary of Sandy's constant presence and would sometimes shut her out. She did not seem to take heed of the warning signs in the beginning, but after an accidental snap of an insult on George's part, she, obviously hurt, instead would take her seat with the rest of her friends. It was painfully prominent, though, that she was uncomfortable sitting between the two couples on either side of her while she perched rigidly by herself on the edge of her chair to make it appear as if she wasn't upset._

_The newly-formed tension between them went up a notch when George accidentally found himself walking through a horribly placed Orcal-family reunion__ at Fred's funeral wake. Sandy, not meaning to really bring him into the exclusive huddle of her kin, merely pointed him out as he tried to pass by unseen, but then, to her evident humiliation, her step-father reached out and spun George around by a tight grip to the shoulder. The man was broad (not _fat_, mind), bearded in brown-hair, freakishly tall (he _**towered **_over George), and was balding on the crown of his head, but he had a kind face with amicable blue eyes and was outgoing. He welcomed the young Weasley man as if he were an old friend._

_Cassandra's mother was almost a mirror-copy of her daughter, except had a little more height to her and had dark eyes instead of honey-colored (she insisted that Sandy got that trait from her grandmother, but she said this fondly). Naturally, she and Sandy shared the same auburn hue of hair (Sandy had dyed hers a midnight black sometime earlier), but the mother had streaks of gray in hers and her face was gently wrinkled in the onset of middle age._

_Sandy's siblings consisted of an older, blood-sister named Belinda (Linda, for short) that was completely opposite of her, with luxuriously long blond hair and ocean blue eyes that sparkled. She had a bubbly, almost trigger-happy personality that scared George a little bit. Surprisingly, though, the two women seemed to have a very close relationship, if Linda's inclination to pounce all over an unperturbed Sandy (who just pretended she wasn't paying attention) was any indication. What surprised George the most was that Belinda was Squib, a non-magical person born into a magical family. Linda did not seem to mind that she stuck out from her relatives and, in spite of the rest of the package that was her, was actually very intelligent. According to her and Sandy's step-father, the eldest Orcal child was attending a Muggle uni-ver-sity known as Oxford. All George could think about when he was told this was if a "University" was some species of unicorn…_

_The last member of Sandy's family was her step-brother (her step-father's real son), Leeland. Leeland was short for a man of his age (almost a year older than George himself) with dark hair and dark eyes. He wore a lot of leather and steel on his clothing – about the only thing he had that wasn't was a black, cotton T-shirt. He seemed to be very protective of his step-sisters, especially Sandy, which meant that he had no respect for George whatsoever. The entire time George had made small-talk with the rest of the group, Leeland stood in silent observation behind his father with his arms crossed, watching the red-haired intruder like he wanted to jump him and ground his face in the dirt. George was glad that Leeland had gone to school in the US or he'd have never have gotten to know Sandy passed a hello._

_Of course, by the way things were going, he wasn't sure if he'd know her passed Fred's _burial_._

_George was courteous to all of them through-out the whole vextatious exchange, no doubt about it, but as soon as they'd wandered away and had left him there with only Sandy, he just could not bring himself to come out of his shell for her. They'd stared at each other, standing a small length apart, and each secretly wondering what the other would do. After a few, excruciatingly awkward moments, George finally sighed and left first, not even turning around to see her reaction to this as he walked off in the direction he'd been going before he'd been detained._

_The kick-in-the-gut moment came when it was finally Fred's time to shine, so to speak. It had been decided, somewhat against his will, that George would speak his twin's eulogy._

"_He would've wanted you to do it. It's only right…" His mother had said, tearfully encouraging him as she handed him his speech that Percy (who had been little more than a walking husk of his former self since he had, along with the Quartet, seen Fred get killed) had helped him write and edit a couple of weeks earlier. George just stood there quietly watching her cry her eyes out, even though the ceremony had not even begun yet._

…_It was worse than he had thought, standing up there on that podium in front of all those people and his brother's casket enchantedly poised above the hole perfectly sized to swallow him up in the ground forever. His hands were shaking as he tried to read from the parchment, but Percy's handwriting was so damn small… Or, at least, that was his brain's excuse to cover up the tears that had been pent-up inside and were unleashing themselves over the brims of his eyes. His voice was just as unsteady and it stuttered as he attempted to begin, so he had to stop midway through the first sentence to start over. The cavern in the right side of his head was throbbing for no reason at all behind the white bandage Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts's on-staff nurse, had kindly stuck there to give him a little dignity. Too bad it wasn't really helping. George felt like he was about to puke (or faint, whichever his body wanted to do more…)._

_And then Cassandra was suddenly standing there, her scarred hands holding tightly to his left shoulder to steady him. She only looked at him for a moment, smiling briefly as if she thought it would assure him that she was there to stand by him. That she had forgiven him for his angry outburst at her and that he was not going to be alone._

_If only George _could _have felt those things when he'd looked into that sweet grin of hers. Though her presence did apparently calm him enough to get through the eulogy, it didn't help him get over the fact that, once Fred's coffin had disappeared under a mound of pre-dug dirt, he was now just one-half of a whole. Without a Forge, there _is_ no Gred._

_Without a Fred, George was completely empty…_

_The two of them were stepping off from the stage, their hands instinctively intertwined despite George's apprehensiveness of the implications the gesture would give everyone who saw them, when Prof. McGonagall came quickly up to them, blocking their path to leave. She informed them in hushed, but excited tones that the school would indeed be opened again by the end of summer holidays, though construction would continue on into the school year. Once she'd brought__ most of herself down from Cloud 9, she then went on to say she'd already asked Harry, Ron, and Hermione if they'd wanted to return to finish their seventh year. They had all refused the amiable courtesy of her actions (including, shockingly, Hermione, who loved learning probably more than living), insisting that they all just wanted to take a breather. Harry had especially been adamant about not coming back. "Too many memories." He had said somberly, though he had not stated whether he'd meant good or bad._

_McGonagall continued with her breathy mitigation, turning right to Sandy and asking her whether she'd be willing to come back for her seventh year. Or, if not that, then maybe she'd like to come back with Neville Longbottom (who had already accepted Prof. Sprout's offer to begin training as a replacement Herbology teacher) to start her own preparation as the future Transfiguration teacher for Hogwarts._

_Sandy's face positively glowed for a fraction of a moment, but then it fell just as fast as she appeared to have suddenly thought of something that would keep her from accepting the amazing opportunity. It was when she looked up quizzically at him that George abruptly realized that _he _was the reason. And before he could stop her, she was turning her former educator down, saying she was needed more at the Burrow for the time being. _

_McGonagall's expression looked crestfallen for a second, but then she came up with the suggestion for Sandy to take time to think about her answer a little more and send an owl when she had a reply. Sandy agreed to this a little too quickly in George's opinion and she and the Professor said their farewells and good lucks as McGonagall stepped passed them and on to the stage they'd just left behind. George and Sandy went to sit with the extended Weasley clan, seated side-by-side once more._

_George, however, did not stay for long. He snuck out right in the middle of McGonagall's announcement that Hogwarts would be reopening amid the cheers of the students, former and otherw__ise. He Apparated to the Leaky Caldron, a local wizard's pub and the entrance to Diagon Ally, but did not go to the courtyard doorway that led to the magical marketplace. Instead, he stepped out on to the busy, Muggle sidewalks of London and went to a little grocery that he'd once gone to with his father and Fred to explore one lazy afternoon in another lifetime and bought the black-and-gold handled razorblade from the man behind the counter that eyed him warily._

_It was only after doing that did he return to the flat, still in shambles from being raided, above the WWW. He emptied the fridge and began to down whatever alcoholic beverage he could locate. And when he started to run out of what was laying around the house, he went out (only once) to buy a few dozen or so each of the fire whiskey and headache-reducer potion bottles._

_He just wanted to forget the past weeks of loneliness and depression. He wanted to forget that reassuring look that Sandy had given him when she joined him behind the podium. He wanted to forget the tears his mother cried and the shell Percy had become. He wanted to forget that Fred was no longer there and that he was now just George._

_And, to do that, he needed to be dangerously, insanely, over-the-moon drunk…_

***End of Flashback***


	3. Prologue: The Nick of Time

**XWarningX: **There are scenes of descriptive self-mutiliation in this chapter, so if that bothers anyone... I'm very sorry. Read at you're own risk. And I also keep forgetting to add that some of the characters in this story might be a bit OOC, especially George, so forgive me for that one, too, please. :S

**Prologue -- The Nick of Time**

* * *

6:00 p.m. on May 31st:

George brought his sullen gaze back up to the mirror after what seemed like hours of staring at the Muggle blade he was about to put to use. He stared listlessly, blindly, at his reflection, as if glaring at it long enough would make the scruffy image of the broken man change into something better – something to be proud of. The white bandage covering his ear-hole was like a sore thumb on someone's hand. It stuck out starkly against the ginger-gray of his dirty hair, drawing attention from the bathtub and the toilet that shared the bathroom.

After a few moments, George Weasley finally shook his head, rubbing his prickly jaw line that he had not shaven in weeks, before using the fingers on his other hand to grab the razor by its sinister, black handle. He brought it up to eye-level, examining the polished finish once more.

"Llll-et's ge-et this o-ver withhhh tthennn, sh-all weee?" He slurred to himself as he adjusted his grip into the proper position on the handle and slowly began to inch it towards his neck…

He had just touched the sharp edge to his skin when a crazy thought came to his mind.

_*Peeerrrhaps…perhaps I should…test this…* _His conscious was tardy in his intoxication, but he smiled haggardly at his likeness in the glass of the mirror. Had he been sober, he would have called his appearance downright frightening.

"Yeeeaaahhh… Test. Thattt sssounds gooooood…" His words were getting more garbled by the minute. He took the blade away from his throat and, instead, turned his left arm so that he could see its pale, freckly underside. He placed the keen-edged knife against the epidermis of his wrist, pausing to glance over his shoulder at the closed bathroom door without knowing any particular reason why. He may have been drunk way beyond what was safe, but he did vaguely remember locking it.

And besides, it wasn't like anyone was going to come barging in looking for him, anyway.

Looking back towards his arm, he took a deep, gurgley breath and, after another second's hesitation, pressed the edge as hard as he could into the nice, big vein inside his wrist.

He bit his lip when he saw the drop of blood suddenly balloon out of the laceration and then stream down into the palm of his hand. Telling himself not stop now, he pressed the blade deeper into the cut, wincing viciously when the sting of pain shot up from the wound all the way to his shoulder. Practically eating the membrane on lips, George squeezed his eyes shut as he prepared for the knife to do its worst. He clutched the handle more tightly before dragging the razor straight up until it reached to the inside of his elbow.

And George screamed at the top of his lungs.

* * *

Cassandra Orcal abruptly appeared in front of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes around six fifteen p.m. She stumbled a bit on landing, but caught her balance and shook her head vigorously.

"Merlin, do I hate doing that…!" She spoke loudly to herself in reference to Apparating as she brushed off and straightened out the wrinkles in her dark shirt and pushed back her dyed midnight black hair. Then, once satisfied that she seemed presentable enough, she turned to stare up with a half-smile at the storefront of the joke shop.

It had been a long time since she had been here…

Well, obviously dropping out of school and taking a year-long quest to find and get rid of seven objects that would destroy the worst Dark Wizard of the generation would hardly leave time to visit a magical joke shop run by her two favorite boys. That and then, of course, the war being instigated earlier just that May and then all of the funeral ceremonies.

And in that retrospect, she had to guess that she did not have _two _favorite boys, anymore. Now… Now it was just one.

Sandy sighed sadly, her shoulders rising up to her ears for a second or so before dropping down below her collarbone. Adjusting the strap of her army-green shoulder bag, she strolled slowly up to the shop window and, settling her contused hands on the glass on either side of her face to block out the light from behind her, she peered in; her honey-colored eyes swooping all around.

The store was closed at the moment, the interior dim and lifeless. Sandy had to admit it was almost spooky. And the place hadn't, as of yet, been cleaned up to its original glory. The Death Eaters _really_ did a number on it when they broke in at the height of the fighting. She was just relieved that the twins had decided to go into hiding at just the right time.

Though, it did not really help out Fred in the end…

Giving her head a sudden shake so forceful that it nearly cracked her neck, Sandy quickly swiped at her eyes to get rid of the sting behind them and went straight for the door that led inside. An invisible bell jingled cheerfully above her as she entered, sounding blatantly out of place in the deserted shop. Sandy just ignored the misplaced noise and began to look about the vicinity.

Stands and shelves were tossed all over the floor, as was merchandise that she failed to avoid and stepped on the Puking Pastilles still littering the ground more-often-than-not. She figured that Verity and George hadn't had time to really tidy up just yet, what with the aforementioned funerals and all. One could hardly think about straightening the messes that enemies have made of your once well-organized emporium when there was other such depressing, but more important things weighing on your mind.

Sandy slipped the shoulder bag off and did a fast walk over to the counter where the cash register sat (compulsorily broken into and emptied), lifting the satchel by its strap to hide it behind there. When she had made it sure it was well out of sight from prying Peeping Toms that might happen to look in through the window as she had, she then turned and gave the shop a customary surveillance one more time before she cupped a hand around her mouth to shout for the person she had come to see in the first place.

"George!? Geooooorrrrge! Are you here!?" She called, lowering her arm until it matched with her other placed on her waist. She waited for his answer for a few moments before doing it again, this time circling the orifice in her face with both hands. "George! George, where are you!?" She cried, shuffling around until she was at the foot of the stairs that trailed to the flat up above the main shop.

She had not seen George since yesterday at Fred's funeral. He had been so shaky up there on the podium when he had to give his own twin brother's eulogy that his mother, Mrs. Weasley, had practically ordered Sandy to go up there to hold him in a standing position. "You're all he's got now, dear, and it's the girlfriend-y thing to do." The plump, orange-haired woman insisted, beaming tearfully at the gothic girl next to her. Sandy could only nod in shock at the matron Weasley's words before doing as authorized and going up to support George.

Sandy spun idly in a circular motion as she continued to search the shop for the red-haired man she sought after, even as her mind wandered to other things. She honestly could not be sure if she and George _were _in a relationship now. Yes, yes, they had kissed at one point during a lull in the battle after Sandy had kindly brought Fred's body to his family in the Great Hall in her tiger form, but she wasn't entirely sure if it was real or just a poor, broken-hearted boy seeking the comfort of someone who he'd been close for at least seven years now. Not to say she had not enjoyed it (cause, holy hell, did she ever…), she just was confused if George had actually meant it or if it was a spur of the moment thing. Fred's lifeless form _had_ been only a few meters away…

A very raw and pained scream suddenly drifted down from upstairs, causing Sandy to whip her gaze up in alarm; her grazed hands falling away from her hips. The dreadful sound had come from the flat – she was sure of it. And since there wasn't anyone else inside besides her that she knew of, it could only be one other person.

"George!!?" She shrieked in terror, forgetting any notion of being discreet about entering a portion of the shop she had never been invited into, and sprinted up the stairs almost three at a time.

* * *

George's voice came down from what was probably his fifth howl since he had started this…this mutilation of his own arm. He wasn't even _thinking _of halting his self-destruction, however, and quickly sliced horizontally across the first cut he had created. It was identical to the last three he had done, all of them leading down from the inside of his elbow like the bloodied rungs of a step-ladder.

George gritted his teeth against the scratchy holler threatening to burst out of his mouth as the others had and once again touched the blade to his skin. This time once more near the big vein in his wrist that he could literally see convulsing beneath his now pasty dermis. It almost made him want to throw the knife across the bathroom, kneel in front of the Porcelain God, and then puke his guts out.

George just closed his eyes for a minute, getting his somewhat fuzzy bearings back, before opening them again, his neck giving a twitch as he forced himself to slash the razor crosswise over the capillary. Hot, red, sticky blood bubbled up and drenched his left hand again.

George couldn't help himself. He threw back his head at the pain exploding in his arm and wailed hoarsely.

* * *

"_Alohomora_!" Sandy cried out, unlocking the door leading inside the flat and shoving it open even before the spell had completed its work. She found herself in a living room that was just as messy as the shop downstairs.

*_The Death Eaters must have come up here, too, when they ransacked the place…_* She mused distractedly before shaking her head and running down a hallway littered with broken picture frames that might have once been nailed to the walls. She didn't have time to explore the flat, though. She had to find George…

"George!" She called for the fourth time, skidding to a stop to look through an open door to her right. It must have been a bedroom, but the mattress was flipped over and clothes that had not gone with the twins to their Auntie Muriel's in their escape were thrown all on the floor. Disregarding the room now that she knew it was empty, she continued on; this time, more cautiously. She tried her upmost hardest to tiptoe in her Doc Martins, but the boots refused to be silenced, creaking like two ships tied on her feet.

"George…?" She said again, this time a little quieter, but still loud enough that the name echoed off of the walls and came back to her for about three rounds. Nothing happened for a few, tense beats.

Another wounded scream came from a door a little behind and to the left of Sandy and she twisted on her heels to double-back and halt in front it. She paused for a second, waiting to see if something else would happen before she decided to wreck havoc and burst in. When she heard the scream once more (with a couple of sobs now attached to the end of it) she took a nicked fist and pounded on the wood panel.

"George! George, are you in there? GEORGE!!" She drummed a bit more with _both _hands as the cries of the person on the other side died off. When nobody came to answer the door she was so desperately trying to get into, Sandy abruptly remembered that she was a witch and raised her red-colored, 13in. redwood wand with the dragon heartstring core and pointed it at the doorknob she didn't even have to bother checking to know it was locked.

"_Alohomora_!" She shouted without hesitation and a yellow light spewed from the end of the wand into the keyhole.

* * *

George had honestly not even heard Sandy calling him. It had been hard to above the howling and the pathetic sobs he was emitting as he continued to lacerate his arm. The skin there was now in tatters and blood was _everywhere _– the mirror, the sink with its counter, the floor, on George himself. It was absolute chaos.

George brought himself to cease injury for moment to stare at the reflection in the mirror again. The red from his own blood was spattered across the glass and his image was breathing hard in mimicry of the real thing. He looked so ghastly it almost made him want to turn away in horror, but he compelled his eyes to stay glued to their copies glaring back at him. He barely paid attention to the shaking door behind him as someone hammered it from the opposite side.

*_I… IIII_ _deserve thisss..._* His mind told him slowly, hauntingly, as if Voldemort had come back and had made residence in his brain, becoming his conscience. He knew that's what must have happened. The Dark Lord was now nesting somewhere in his brain. That was the only explanation he could think of as to why he was going through this. There was that and the thought of being able to be with his brother in a better place than the Hell he now realized he had been residing in for years.

"S-s-seeee yaaa sooon, Fred." He stuttered morbidly at his counterpart in the mirror, smiling gauntly as he had before. He was just about to make a final gash in his throat when, in a shower of yellow sparks, the bathroom door was blasted open. A short, slightly undernourished figure in dark clothes pushed her way in, placing a scarred hand on the wooden panel when it bounced off the adjoining wall next to the doorframe and came back at her. She shoved at it until it slammed the plaster again, making a nice dent with the doorknob.

George whipped around at the commotion and suddenly found himself staring _right_ into Cassandra Orcal's honeyed eyes, which were looking _right_ back at him widely. Her mouth was a thin line and she appeared as if someone had sewed her lips together to prevent her from communicating. George didn't speak, his hand still holding tightly to the handle of the wet razor blade now slick with his blood and pointing directly at the skin of his neck

Neither one said a word for a long while as they continued to glare, either unsure of _what _exactly to say in the situation or just not wanting to be the one to bring up the obvious first.

At last, Sandy came to the end of her rope, flicking her eyes down at the horrific and gory sight that was now George's arm. Still, she did not a comment. After a second or two, she instantly raised her lengthy wand and pointed it straight at the razor in between George's fingers.

"_Expelliarmus_!" She spoke clearly and determinedly. The knife flew right out of George's fingertips and flung itself hard at the mirror, enough to crack the glass into a network of spider webs. It then landed with a metallic thud on the floor tiles, skidding across them until it went right past Sandy's feet and out into the hallway, only stopping when it came into contact with a smashed picture frame.

Sandy lifted her gaze from where she had watched that somewhat comical, but out-of-place scene and returned it to George. Though he was probably dizzy and disoriented from all of the liquor he'd apparently consumed (judging by the empty bottles on the floor), she felt a stab of satisfaction when she saw him flinch at the very pissed expression she bestowed upon him. After wallowing in the sadistic vindication she got from this, she finally thrusted her wand deep into her back pocket and strolled purposefully over to the sink next to George, not paying attention in the least bit to the fact that he was shirtless and concentrated on activating the water taps on the faucet.

George stared down at the top of her head as she turned the faucet on, sticking her hand under the stream of water to check the temperature. He was helpless to stop her when she grabbed on to the hand attached to his mangled arm, his body jerking and wobbling dangerously as she pulled him forward to begin washing out the cuts. The liquid seeping into his muscles was burning hot and was stinging something awful, but he remained silent and unmoving.

A few quiet and tense moments passed as she continued to clean him up. She was honestly too angry and upset to really talk to him and she'd actually forgotten that the reason she'd come in the first place was that she had been worried about him after he'd left suddenly after the funeral yesterday. She would have never expected something like this of him, however. Not the calmer half of the terrible duo she had known and loved through-out five of her years in school and in the two following. It was all almost too much to take in at one time, but she applied herself to the task at hand, even if it was so she would not have to look her own patient in the eye.

George took this time to examine his voluntary nurse, cocking his head like a child would at a fallen bird. Her hair was the same midnight black it had been all month, as she had dyed her hair that color as a sort of symbolism for the deaths caused by the war. He really didn't have the heart to tell her that her tips were getting in the blood she had not yet wiped off of his arm. He had the inclination to the think that she probably wouldn't listen to him anyway. Catching him in the act of attempting suicide seemed to have an affect on her that made her not want to have a _lick_ of conversation whatsoever.

Plus, he kind of liked the tingly feeling he got whenever a strand of black happened to brush past his bare chest and made him shiver. He didn't want to say something and then have her pull her hair into a tie, because that just would _not_ do at the moment. Nope…

Her fingers were gentle as she continued to rub, massage, and wash his arm. The appendage had already been going numb from the loss of blood as George had continued to massacre himself, but he could still tell when she put pressure into her gnarled fingers and pushed against the bones. It was a nice aphrodisiac and it made George want to fall asleep or maybe even take Sandy down on to the tiled floor…

George knew then that he was definitely drunk if all he was thinking about was shagging one of his closest friends while she was administering first aid to him.

Of course, he really wasn't sure _what_ they were anymore. After they'd kissed in the Great Hall and she'd kept him from fainting at the funeral and now this. Were they in a relationship now? A real, honest-to-Merlin relationship? George just could not imagine it, though, he'd definitely thought about her in that way. On numerous occasions, to be exact. They'd never talked about moving beyond their seven year friendship, however, so how was this going to work if they hadn't even discussed it?

His head was hurting like hell now. He raised his free hand to his forehead and pinched the area between his eyes to relieve the strain there.

"It's what you get for doing this yourself." Sandy suddenly quipped smartly at him, causing him to raise his gaze to stare at her blankly; as if he wasn't certain if it was most assuredly her that spoke "I bet it doesn't seem like it was a good idea now, does it?" She added in a tart voice as she dropped his hand for the time being and opened the cabinet behind the damaged mirror. She scuttled about the shelves noisily in there for a few seconds before she found what she was looking for and withdrew a large, purple bottle George appeared to have missed during his drinking binge. He bent a little to get closer so that he could read the label clearly and saw that maybe it was the right thing that he'd unintentionally over-looked it. There, in big, red letters covering a bright pink sticker was the hallmark "Blood-Replenishing Potion."

Sandy was regarding the bottle, too, as if not entirely trusting the contents inside. She turned it around and read the label from side-to-side, her lips moving soundlessly. Once she was done, she cocked her head with a little _hmm… _noise and then placed the violet container on the counter by the sink. She ascended her honeyed eyes back up to George's blue ones before grasping his injured arm and dragging him close to her again. With her unoccupied hand, she reached behind her and extracted her wand once more, pointing the tip at the slits in the red-haired man's skin. Then, to George's surprise, she began to lilt her tone slightly as if getting ready to sing.

"_Vulnera Sanatur_..." The notes of the spell rang out harmoniously from her aforementioned lips and a silver light sparkled out of the end of her wand, surrounding the gashes in a blinding display of stars before dissipating. When they had both regained their vision again, George's jaw became unhinged slightly when he saw that his wounds were almost completely closed up and healed. The crisscrossed scars were still there, but otherwise, everything looked perfectly normal.

George's stared gob-smacked as he rotated his blue orbs from the now fully cured skin on his appendage to the laconic Cassandra as _she_ surveyed her own handiwork and nodded once when she appeared satisfied. She then unceremoniously loosened her hold on his arm to allow it to drop limply (and a little painfully) at his side. George finally stopped swiveling his gaze like an inexperienced nancy and fixed an agitated glare on Sandy's face, when a glitter of something silver on her neck winked at him and he slowly lowered his attention to the tiger's eye pendent greeting him from her collarbone.

"Y-y-yyyyooou ke-ept it…" He stammered as he drunkenly pointed a finger at the necklace. Sandy let out a derisive snort as she reached up and grabbed George roughly by the chin, jerking his head this way and that, inspecting him as if he were some curious item she'd discovered instead of a person she'd known for half her life.

"Of course, I _kept_ it. Did you think I'd just toss it after you yelled at me, started avoiding me, _and _acted like a fake arse in front of my family?" She questioned sarcastically, raising her wand again and directing it towards his face. Before George could even begin to sluggishly wonder what she was doing, Sandy had recited another spell. "_Raserson Visage._"A tinny, gray spark _poofed! _out of the tip and, after cocking a rounded end at George like a spaniel dog with it's head, it squeaked and suddenly whipped around his jaw line in a boomerang motion and, after a five-second pause, the stubble that George had not bothered to shave all month fell off and floated silently to the floor like so many feathers.

"I always thought you looked better when you weren't trying to appear a homeless bum." Sandy remarked somewhat imperiously as she at last replaced her wand into her back pocket and quickly turned off the faucet tap she had accidentally left running a tad too long.

George observed her listlessly, curiously, as she paced around the bathroom, gathering things and mumbling to herself. She all but threw open the cabinet doors under the sink and looked around, almost having to climb in there to locate what she was attempting to sniff out. George nearly wanted to chuckle idiotically at the fact that he could only see her backend sticking out from the little storage space. The image came off like the cupboard was actually eating Sandy whole and he had to face away to keep from permitting her to hear his inebriated laugher.

At last she seemed to find what it was she was hunting for and extracted her body out of the cabinet with a fluffy towel in her arms. She immediately deposited this towel on to the counter next to the bottle of blood-replenisher and then strode over to the bathtub. She inspected it thoroughly, magically cleaning out whatever debris the Death Eaters might have deposited in there when they trashed the flat and, once done, she brought the water in the pipes behind the walls to life by giving the spigots a twist as she had the ones on the sink. Steam began to fill the room, mimicking the liquid now filling up the tub.

George stood silently by himself, wobbling from time-to-time, as he watched Sandy draw for him a nice, hot bath. She reminded him a bit of his mother, stalking around and muttering under her breath like she was; taking care of him like it was her job, though she did not give the impression that she minded it… In all accounts, she honestly behaved as if she were enjoying the chore of polishing him up.

A thought miraculously occurred to George's brain, muffled as his mind was from drinking so much, and he inched his head a fraction to his right to see Sandy digging behind the toilet for something she obviously needed back there.

"S-Saaaan-dy? H-how diiiid you kkkknnnnow I'd…beeee here? IIIII ne-ever mentioned tooo an-ny-one where I wassss ggooooing." He slurred as she straightened herself up from the back of the commode to gaze at him quizzically; two bottles of hair products that had apparently been tossed over there now in her grasp. When she seemed to have mentally deciphered his gibberish, she just shook her head, lowered the lid of the toilet to close it, and placed the canteens on there.

"It's been seven years, George." She said around an uncontrolled chuckle, turning to face him directly for what felt like the first time since she walked in on him and placed both of her distressed hands on her hips. "Do you really believe I don't know you by now? Where does a prankster feel most at home but in a joke shop? Especially his own?" She added with another flourish of her head in both directions, closing her eyes in minor weariness while murmuring the words, "Hopeless git," in sotto voce.

George cocked his head in a way reminiscent of the little face-shaving spell Sandy had used on him a few minutes earlier and gave a lop-sided, but familiar smirk. "Arrreee you sssaaaying that IIII'mm beeecoming preee-dic-taable?" He asked, his sentence as muddled as ever. His expression crumbled, however, when Sandy replied with a curt: "Yes."

George fidgeted, actually embarrassed that his antics appeared to be losing their touch on her. He pursed and screwed up his lips as if thinking really hard, but turned away from her as he replied with a quiet, little, "Ohhh…"

Sandy contemplated him for a few seconds before shaking her head again and circling around to the tub to close off the faucet and halt the water.

"Well, that aside, I'm going to inform you right now that you smell downright horrid, so if you would be so kind as to hop into the tub…" She trailed off she backed away from the said vessel and, with a grand, showy gesture of her hands, motioned for him to enter it.

George, hesitating for beat, shuffled his way over, accepting Sandy's proffered hand to steady himself as he bent over the tub's rim and peered in. It was only filled to about the metaphorical half-way mark, which, if his brain running on the ant-races was thinking correctly, would just be enough that it would cover his…unmentionables, but nothing more. He glanced over at Sandy inquisitively, an eyebrow raised to display his confusion. Sandy's shoulders gyrated up-and-down heavily.

"You don't actually think I'm going to leave you alone in a _full _basin of water, do you?" She inquired in mock disbelief. "You might drown in the state that you're in. Nevertheless, you really do need a wash and, I not being your mum, am _not _about to selfishly invade your privacy." She spun away from him then to attend to the rest of the bathroom, once again taking her wand from the back of her dark jeans. She then began to use it to tidy up the blood that George had gotten everywhere (repairing the mirror she broke in the process) and, when that was out of the way, magically produced a cloth sack out of thin air and proceeded to go around picking up the drained bottles of fire whisky and antihistamine potions.

George spectated from his spot next the tub, his hands having gotten into the habit of wringing themselves. His orbs followed Sandy's movements as she'd bend down to retrieve a discarded flask and then come back up to throw it into the bag she carried. A swell of affection for her abruptly ballooned in his heart and her couldn't help wondering at something that had just entered his mind under the influence of the alcohol still in his bloodstream.

"Arrree yo-ou mad aat mee?" He really had not meant to literally voice the question.

Yup, it was definitely the alcohol.

Sandy whipped a gaze over at him in surprise, her black-dyed hair flying around her face as she did so. She glared at him for a long moment before sighing deeply in exasperation; her shoulders drooping so that she lost some of her already short stature.

"No… No, George, I'm not mad at you." She insisted as she began to tie a knot to close up the sack, not even bothering to look around for any more bottles. "I was just... It _scared _me to see you with that Muggle razor at your neck like that. If I had come any later, you might've… Might have…" She trailed off with a furious shake of her head and quickly brought up a war-scarred hand to wipe at her suddenly glistening eyes.

George lowered his eyelids halfway, feeling a bubble of shame rise up in his gut. Before he could say anymore, however, Sandy beat him to the punch.

"Anyway, yes, _you_…need to get into that bathtub, my dear friend. Seeing as I just cleared most of the dangerous stuff out of here, I will leave you to your own devices, BUT!" She paused to hold up a rigidly straight finger. "I am going to be leaving this bathroom door open a crack just in case you need to call me for anything. And, before you think of getting any funny ideas while you rip-roaring drunk…" She dragged the sentence to a halt as she swished her wand around again and mentally conjured a wicker chair from nothing and placed it right next to the tub and close by George, who looked back at her with furrowed eyebrows and crossed blue eyes. Sandy's own eyebrows bobbed up into her hairline momentarily and pointed at the chair one, last time. From the tip of her wand came a blast of magenta swirls, which produced a creepy-looking, stuffed, red rooster with blue overalls and a green, button-down shirt dotted with itty-bitty, red apples. His scaly, yellow legs (which were honestly a little too skinny to hold up his portly body), were swinging to the rhythm of a song that was obviously stuck in his head and the crown of fake feathers on top of his cranium was swaying to-and-fro as he waved from side-to-side. The most important feature on him, though, were his ginormous, buglike eyes, in which his unfixed pupils clattered around noisily as he danced to his unheard melody.

Sandy, undisturbed by the rooster's eerie appearance, bent double so that she was to his level and tapped the nearest overall button to get his attention. When she had it, she gestured towards George, who had backed as far away as he was able to from the chair where the ugly toy sat.

"I need _you_ –" She paused and jabbed her finger into the rooster's chest. "— to watch _him _for me." She jerked her head in George's direction again. "And I want you to come get me if something happens, like if his head sinks under the water or he slips while getting in-and-out. Do you understand?" She said all of this very slowly, so that the words may sink into the rooster's proverbial ear more thoroughly.

The rooster raked his constantly-open eyes in between the two people in the room for a second before finally settling them on Sandy and nodding his head (it was more like he nodded his _whole _body) to agree to her demands. Sandy smiled, patted his crown-feathers and then stood straight again, turning to George, who eyed his chicken bodyguard warily.

"Alright, then… _That's _figured out." She said as she began to head for the door to go out into the hallway, tossing the sack of loudly clinking bottles over her shoulder and causing them to crash together sonorously. "I'm going to straighten up your flat for you while you're getting bathed. It's a right disaster area out there. And after that, once you're dried and dressed – I'll bring some clean stuff for you here in a minute – and you drink some of that blood-replenisher, we're going immediately to the Burrow and we'll tell Molly and Arthur what happened together." She hesitated at George's abrupt change of expression to one of slight disagreement to this plan. Sandy shook her head at him. "George, they _need _to know what's been going on and they need to here it from _you_. You're not alone in this, George; all of us are trying to recover from this month and I know it's been probably the hardest on you, but you've got to let us in, alright?" Her honey eyes bore holes into him, attempting to telepathically will him to understand. "Okay, now I'm going out here to put things back where they belong. Are you going to make it in here alone?" He haltingly nodded at her. "Good… Well, then, I'll see you when you get out…" And she at last closed the door, leaving the slit between it and the doorframe as she promised she would.

George stared after her for a while, even when she had long disappeared.

He really didn't know what to think anymore…

The orange-haired man sighed gloomily as he began to strip his off his jeans, using the toilet behind him as a seat so as not to have to worry about tipping over. Once completely nude, he gingerly stepped into the warm water waiting for him in the tub and sat down in it. He was a little disappointed when it only came up to barely engulf the tops of his freckled hips. Taking in another deep breath, he flicked a gaze over to the rooster still swaying his plump body on the edge of his wicker chair; eyes rattling around in the plastic sockets.

George wondered if it was _really_ possible to be able to drown oneself in a few inches of water.

* * *

A/N: So, that's _finally _the end of the "prologue" and now the **REAL **story can begin! :D

Customary Rant: I'm sorry if you happen to find any inconsistencies and errors in here, guys. I'm still a little tired from working on the really _long_ 2nd chapter and I'm extremely busy with baby-sitting and finals coming up in school, so I don't always have time to go back and change things. And I'm not certain if the way George is acting in this chapter is right the right way that people really are when they are drunk. Forgive me for that, as I'm not experienced with such things... :/

Anyway, enjoy the update! ^_^


	4. June 1st thro 10th: Screams Remedy

**Screams Remedy**

* * *

June 1st-10th:

His parents immediately began looking into getting him an appointment with something called a "therapist," at the urging of one Hermione Granger. According to her, a "therapist" was a person trained in the use of psychological methods for helping patients overcome psychological problems and/or physical defects.

Talking and listening to Hermione was always like hearing a dictionary speak…

When the word of his cutting had gotten out, the entire family, which now included Hermione, Cassandra, and Harry Potter by default, put their noses to the grindstone and began researching to see if there were any wizard "therapists " in the whole of Great Britain. Bill and Charlie were appalled that there were none on staff at St. Mungo's and the Weasleys were forced to turn to the Muggle world.

Hermione and Sandy, along with a coercly volunteered Ronald Weasley (Harry was still applying himself to the task of being present at the war funerals), offered themselves up as scouts to go out and search for someone and were gone by the 2nd of June. It was three days later when they returned with the _exciting _news of a witch all the way in Liverpool who openly worked as a Muggle psychiatrist, but also provided services for the magical community. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, after reading some of the information the woman had considerately wrote down on a piece of parchment, agreed to hire her instantly and sent Percy's owl with the money Harry kindly lent them to pay for the sessions.

And that's how George found himself looking up at a gray, dismal office building right smack dab in the busy center of Liverpool's economic district that housed the city's more influential individuals, such as lawyers, accountants, and all around, "Ask For Our Services And We'll Give Ya A Hefty Bill For Doing Absolute Squat." The smell of salt water was blowing in off of the Mersey Estuary nearby.

His parents stood on either side of him; his father just about as tall as he was and the top of his mother's head barely brushing right under the peak if his shoulder. He had to bend double at the waist if he even wanted to speak to her face-to-face.

"Mum, please, if you love me, you won't expect me to go in there." He begged her, earning a surprisingly, but slightly uplifting, soft look.

"Oh, sweetheart, if I did that, I might as well let you do even sillier things than slicing your arm to pieces, like jump off of ol' Benjamin in London." She said in an obviously fake sugary tone, then took the knitted green beret off of her head and swatted the back of his skull with it. He ducked a little too late and it hit his solid cranium with a muffled _whumph! _"Don't test me right now, George." She added fiercely with her finger pointing right at the tip of his nose. Her long nails looked sharp enough to lob the appendage right off of his face.

George, berating himself for not knowing better than to ask his mother for leniency, straightened back to his full height and turned to his left to try his father.

"Dad, please –-"

"George, if you love _me_, you'd leave me the hell out of it." Was the quick response as his father grabbed his shoulders with both hands from behind and shoved him towards the threatening-looking door of the building that, instead of opening and closing like a normal, Muggle entrance, went around-and-around in a circle as it was pushed.

The "therapist's" office was on the third floor, second door to the left from the boring lift that only went up-and-down compared to the entertaining ones at the Ministry that went every direction possible. Black letters stuck to the large window interrupting the wood paneling announced the room inside belonged to Velveeta Lynch: Special Needs Psychologist and Trauma Consultant.

George cautiously rotated the doorknob long since turned copper from rusting and stuck his head around the edge of the door to glance around. The office was just as dull as the rest of the building appeared to be. It was square with brown, wooden walls, an activated fan spinning slowly on the ceiling, and a single window that had a nice view of the side of the identical office building right next door to this one. The carpet was a deep burgundy color and made a person bounce a little when they stepped on it.

George inched even further in, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets as he continued to inspect. There was a green couch with only one arm and a hideous, paisley armchair set up in the back left corner of the room. Just across from them in the _right_ cornerwas a tall lamp. To the immediate left of the door coming in was a dark desk with a gigantic white box on it that was connected to a board covered by rows-upon-rows of letters, numbers, and symbols. Another box, this one a lot smaller and colored black, sat on the desktop as well. It had some kind of handle with a curly cord sticking out of it. The rest of the space on the desk had succumbed to hostile takeover by piles of paperwork and picture frames.

Curious, George came around the desk to get a good look at the pictures; first taking notice that the white box had a dark glass face on it. He stared at the first picture, a moving, black-and-white shot of a decently attractive young witch in a school uniform. She was a casting a Patronus charm in the shape of a writhing crocodile and, judging by the ecstatic look on her face, it was most likely her first time in doing so.

George curled his lips up in thought, turning to the other three pictures on the desk. They all looked like carbon copies of each other, for they featured an older version of the witch from the Patronus photo. In each one, she was hugging and smiling with a different man. George furrowed his eyebrows, wondering if his "therapist" had a promiscuity problem or just had trouble keeping husbands.

Before he had any more time to explore, the door to the office opened again and the same woman from the pictures came bumbling in, holding a red-and-white bag with a giant yellow M on the side in one hand and a tall beverage container with similar colors in the other. Something that smelled absolutely delicious wafted out of the bag and up George's nostrils.

The woman suddenly sensed that she was being closely scrutinized and snapped her gaze to meet George's, which startled him into taking a step back. She had a nice-looking, somewhat pointed face with fancy tortoise-shell rimmed glasses connected to a silver chain resting on her nose. She had on a rather eccentric green dress suit with black heels and a sparkly green moth clip keeping her gray-streaked blonde hair in a half-up do. A white ascot splotched with yellow-green splashes was tied around her pale, thin neck and red nail polish covered her fingernails, which went with her red lips perfectly.

She and George engaged in a glaring contest for a couple of seconds. She only spoke when he blinked.

"Who the _hell _shot you in the head?" She questioned unexpectedly as she set her bag and beverage container on the desk next to the black box with the curly-wired handle, raking him over behind her spectacles. George's eyes widened, not exactly sure how to respond to that. The woman then clearly realized what a bad introduction that was because she quickly shook her head. "Never mind, don't answer that. Mr. Weasley, right?" George nodded. "Okay, good. I'm Velveeta Lynch – please, refrain from mentioning that my first name resembles that of a brand of cheese product. Have a seat, stay awhile." She said in a sarcastic voice, waving him from behind her desk and towards the green, single-armed couch.

George, abruptly feeling very perplexed by this woman, tried his best to keep down a sudden swell of attraction for her. The fact that she could crack a joke in a serious career position made her very sexy to him, despite her being most likely quite a few years his senior. As a few more, naughty thoughts entered his head, a flash of Sandy's face when she found him cutting his arm with the razor streaked across his brain and he shook his cranium furiously as he did as suggested and sat

Velveeta Lynch came over a moment after, placing herself into the armchair and balancing a clipboard on her lap. She tapped down a list that George could not see from his position with her pretty green quill pen before she finally cleared her throat.

"Okay, so… Your name is George Weasley, correct?" She asked, as if she had forgotten she had already inquired as to his name, but George confirmed it once more anyway. She wrote something down on the parchment on her clipboard. "And you're here because your girlfriend discovered you cutting yourself with a Muggle razor, is _that_ correct." She added, pausing and looking over at George sternly when he began to mumble something.

"Cassandra isn't really my girlfriend…" He found himself saying, feeling that he should be guilty about it, but deep down actually meaning it.

Velveeta went on glaring at him for a moment.

"Ookay, we'll boil that egg when we come to it." She tapped down her invisible list again; an expression of being impressed coming to her face and it showed in her eyebrows as they lifted into her hairline. "It says here that you fought in the battle at Hogwarts. Nice." She looked up at him with a smile that only went about maybe a quarter of the way up her right cheek. "It's always fun to meet another veteran, although you're not the first survivor I've had in here since Lord Voldemort was killed. …It says you lost your twin brother in the fighting. Huh…" She trailed off, for once not focusing directly at her clipboard, and stared hard at George once more. "Tell me, boy. Was your brother the reason you attempted to cut?" She was direct and to the point about it. So much so, that George had to lean away from her. He suddenly could not recall why he had been drawn to her. She was beginning to scare him a little with her overtly strong personality and perceptivity.

"Um… Well, kind of…I guess." He stuttered out, Velveeta Lynch's eyes boring into him behind the glasses. "We were best friends, him and I. It hasn't been easy." He said, pulling his hands from his pockets at last and clasping them in a tight prayer-fashion as he rested his elbows on his knees. Velveeta _harumed!_ (uncomfortingly reminding George of Umbridge) and leaned back into her armchair, wiggling a little to get comfy.

"It rarely is when one twin is left behind." She said evenly, producing an astoundingly pearl-colored wand (George had expected everything she owned to be green) about 7.5in. in length from the bosom of her dress suit jacket. George blushed a little when he saw her do that, but Velveeta barely paid him any mind. She instead waggled the wand over her shoulder towards her desk and the beverage container she had set on it levitated into the air, floating on an invisible cloud until it reached the blonde woman's free hand. When she had set it in her lap, she tapped the end of the wand on the clear lid of the container and a long, skinny, plastic tube was suddenly sticking up out the middle of it. She sucked on the tip of this tube, which indicated to George that it was obviously some kind of device the Muggles invented so they could drink without having to do it the _hard_ way by putting rims to their lips.

Velveeta put the beverage down, clearing her throat. "Okay, Mr. Weasley, about this cutting incident… Can you tell me exactly what went on?" She relocated her clipboard (which never really left her lap) and stared back at George as she awaited his reply.

George, hating that he had recount this to a perfect stranger, rolled his eyes and leaned back to lay his head on the wall behind him, which the one-armed couch was pushed against.

"It was May 31st and I had been at war funerals practically all month. My own brother was laid to rest just the day before and I guess that's when it really struck me… I wasn't a twin any more. It felt like a part of me had deflated and died with him. I just – I don't know – couldn't handle the realization that I would now have to go through the rest of my life without him. …I wasn't even with him when he was killed, so I guess the guilt got to me and all I wanted to do was die, too. I hadn't planned on slicing my arm. I was just testing the razor I bought to make sure it was sharp enough. …And I was drunk, which, coincidentally, has been known to lower a person's inhibitions."

Velveeta furrowed her eyebrows, not laughing at his dry sarcasm. "Why a Muggle razor, Mr. Weasley? Why not just use the Unforgivable Killing Curse and die instantly without the pain?" She inquired, writing down stuff on the parchment.

George shrugged heavily. "I guess because the guilt of not being with Fred – my brother – when he was killed made me feel so awful that I didn't _want _to die a painless death. I…wanted it to hurt and be slow. While I heard from friends that were with him when he died that he went quickly, I wanted to feel bad while gradually slipping away…" He trailed off and halted, the depression beginning to swallow him up again.

Velveeta's eyebrows were almost touching by now as she looked hard at her newest patient. Then, sighing, she reached up and flicked the glasses off her nose (they fell down her front and danced around on the chain that still hung around her neck), revealing shockingly purple eyes that she massaged with her fingers before replacing the spectacles on her face. To George's astonishment, she changed the subject.

"Mr. Weasley, why don't you tell me about your girlfriend…Cassandra Orcal -- did I say that right? What did she do when she walked in on you cutting?" She shifted to balance her beverage, wand, and clipboard in her lap as she placed the fingertips of both hands together, steepling them as she glared at George even more pointedly than before.

George stiffened at this. "Mrs. Lynch –"

"Please, it's_ Ms_. Lynch." She interrupted as she sucked more of her drink out through the plastic tube. George glanced dubiously over at the three pictures on her desk with the different men in every one of them.

"Okay, _Ms_. Lynch. Yes, Cassandra Orcal did catch me cutting. She _Alahamorad_ my bathroom door open, _Expellarmised_ the razor out of my hand, and then washed the laceration I gave myself." He purposely neglected to mention how Sandy also took care of him afterwards. "I've got to stress, though, ma'am; Sandy and I may have been friends all during my years at Hogwarts and then some, but we've just started…_dating_…kind of." He was surprised at how difficult it was to say that word in context with Sandy's name.

Ms. Lynch quirked one of her previously furrowed eyebrows.

"Hmm. Preventing from harming yourself further and caring for the injuries you inflicted on your arm by your own will… Sounds like a girlfriend-y thing to do to _me_." She said with another quarter-smile, once again sucking on her drinking tube from her beverage container. George gave her an annoyed expression.

"Well, maybe… I don't really consider it _serious _just yet, however, but I feel if I say that to Sandy, then… Well, then I'll lose her friendship, which I honestly was more comfortable with. And I don't want to be the one to break her heart, either." He said, turning to look out the lone window to stare at the side of the building next door.

Ms. Lynch, suddenly _really _interested, abruptly kicked off her heels and brought up her feet to sit cross-legged in her armchair, once more surprising George with her slightly unprofessional attitude.

"Oh, I've always loved good romantic-angst tales… Why don't you start at the beginning, like when you first met Ms. Orcal? And tell me about yourself while you're at it. Mind, we won't get to all of it by the end of this short session, but your parents have paid for an entire year's worth of appointments, so we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other." She winked behind the glasses before waving for him to go on.

George, though still a little iffy about his new "therapist," found himself spilling his guts about everything he could think of for the next forty-five minutes. Ms. Lynch was correct in her assessment that he would not get to share everything by the end, but as he was getting ready to head back down to his mother and father waiting in the lobby, he realized just how cleansing talking to this strange woman had been. And, he also noticed, that he could not wait to come in next week.

And not just because he figured out that he liked admiring Ms. Lynch's nice arse.

* * *

A/N: So, yeah, this story has become way more elaborate than I thought it would be. I have come to the conclusion that I need to stretch it out into several more chapters than I had originally planned. It shouldn't be a problem, though...maybe.

Anyway, it's a short chapter, but we're introduced to a new character! ^_^ *Claps for Me* I love my crazy witch therapist. :3

On Another Note: I would like to thank SnufflieSocks and Wildfire Sniper for being my _only _volunteer readers/reviewers thus far. Your feedback meant a lot and it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling that my story caught both of your attentions at all. :D

So, yeah. Have fun reading and please review, guys! ...Or anyone else who decideds to read this. :)


	5. June 11th thro 25th: Crowded House

**Crowded House**

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June 11th-25th

Even though George had warmed up to the idea of therapy by the end of that first visit, there were still things about his state of affairs that put his nerves in a bind.

For one of these things, just before he had walked out of her office, Ms. Lynch had nonchalantly given him the suggestion (order) that it would be in his "best interest" to stay with his parents and his extended family at the Burrow.

"From the information you've told me today, Mr. Weasley, I honestly don't trust you to stay in your flat above your shop. In your state of mind, you're liable to do something silly again -- like maybe using one of your products to blow up your face. Giving the fact that you apparently come from a _very_ large family, I'm going to tell you that I think it'd be a grand ol' plan to crash with them for awhile. Until you get back on your feet, you know?" She said as she sat down behind her desk in a large, spinney, browned-leathered chair and activated the white box with the black screen (it turned a sky blue when she pushed what was obviously some kind of power button).

George was a little too quick to consent to this advice. He especially thought this when he asked how long she thought he'd have to settle there, to which she initially replied with a flick of her violet eyes up to him and a steady stare from behind her fancy spectacles.

"Oh… I'm not exactly suuuure…" She said in a languid and lazy tone, forgetting the white box for the moment and leaning forward to rest her gently-pointed chin on her conjoined fists; elbows coming up to prop on the desktop to hold her in her position. "It could be…a few months…to maybe even a _year_ before you're deemed well enough to live on your own again… We'll just have to see what happens with you as time goes on, boy." She smiled almost a little too condescendingly and reached out to give a fluttering pat to his hand. "See you next week, Mr. Weasley." She concluded as she turned back to her box and began to push down repeatedly on the board with the rows of symbols and letters on it with her fingers, making an over-bearing clicking sound to accompany it.

George left the room a little more peeved than he had been entering it.

In the days following, everyone pitched in to help relocate George back into his old room (the one he used to share with Fred…) on the second floor of the Burrow. He'd been staying there over the course of May, as no one, not even himself at the time, felt comfortable enough after the Battle of Hogwarts to go back to their own homes, yet; not even Charlie, who lived and worked in Romania with dragons, or Bill and his wife, Fleur. Despite how crowded the Burrow became (as Harry, Sandy, and Hermione were practically living with them now), it seemed that accommodations had been worked out rather well. Harry, as he always did, became Ron's new roommate in the latter's small room just under the attic. Bill returned to his old room on the first floor and got the husband's privilege to share it with Fleur, but only at the insistence of Mrs. Weasley that they keep the "physical stuff" to a minimum (a.k.a. no shagging in the house unless you want to have permanent nosebleeds) so as not to traumatize Ginny, whose room was also in that hall. Ginny jokingly stated to the Quartet (and an eavesdropping George) that it wouldn't have been a big problem, as there was a bathroom in between her and Bill's respective bedrooms and, if the married couple _did_ find themselves to be a little randy, she would've had something fun to hang over her eldest brother's head for the duration of the time he chose to remain in the Weasley family home. George loved her sense of humor, as it had always been kind of similar to his and Fred's…

Ginny herself was already sharing her small bedroom with Hermione and Sandy. It was slightly over-crowded with Ginny's bed and two cots in there, but the three girls did not seem to mind. In fact, numerous times before his little "incident" with the Muggle razor, George would awake in the middle of the night to hear raucous giggling coming from the floor below from _that_ certain room, as if the three females were having some sort of midnight party. He hadn't minded it, though, as it always entertained him to hear their stories and jokes waft up through the cracks in his floorboards.

Percy was to have his old bedroom just down the hall from George's (he had to keep telling himself that it was just _his_ room now) and was to share it with Charlie. …George was honestly surprised that Percy didn't seem to be losing even _half_ the marbles he himself was, as Percy had been the only other person to be a witness to Fred's death, according to Sandy when she spilled the dreadful secret at Shepherd's funeral. The most he'd seen of his usually stuck-up older brother was that he had become more affectionate with his family, instead of withdrawing as George felt himself to be doing. But, then, of course, he figured if something did ever snap inside Percy, he'd have Charlie in the room with him to stop him from committing a spectacular feat of stupidness.

This left George alone in his former bedroom. He supposed that his parents did this so as to give him the space he needed. He walked in through the door the day after his session with Ms. Lynch and gave the place a once over, as if he hadn't even set foot in it for the entire month of May as he actually had. It was a little perplexing to him why he suddenly felt so different coming in here now. He began to incline towards the idea that maybe his reentrance in the manner he had been (somewhat) forced to had something to do with it. That he wasn't just staying in the room that he'd once shared (and, on lots of occasions, nearly blew up) with his late twin of his own accord. He was here because it was required that he be kept an eye on. An unresisting hostage, so to speak, but as such under good intentions.

Another one of Ms. Lynch's "recommendations" consisted of him taking time off from starting up WWW again. The only clear reason she gave for this went hand-in-hand with her first suggestion that he stay at the Burrow – she had _actually_ been serious about being concerned that he might use one of his own products to fatally harm himself.

George, although begrudgingly he could see how her worry could be plausible (hey, if he had used a Muggle razor, there was obviously no telling what else he might use should he fall back into THAT pit-trap again), had wanted so _very_,_ very _badly to argue with her about this, but then she'd gone and speedily changed the subject to the twice-mentioned instruction of him bunking at the Burrow.

Hence, one more reason for him to storm out streaming smoke from his ears at the end of the primary visit.

Of course, having once been one-half of the mischievous Weasley pair, George did not intend to let this small element of his slightly nutty therapist's creation bring his and Fred's business down. In the chaos that was everyone's attempt to help him essentially move back to his childhood home, George not-so-stealthily crammed all things joke shop-related into one of his packing boxes; everything from blueprints, notes, sketches, models of half-finished, future merchandise, and bills concerning the lighting, heating, and plumbing for his flat and, indubitably, for the whole building itself.

Wizards, sadly, had to pay their versions of taxes, too…

The amount of cardboard that travelled with George ended up being piled into the four corners of the room and, even though they were all spaced out facilely, they were able to reach up to the ceiling. They looked like quadruple box-pillars holding up the roof over George's head. And that didn't account for the containers that had his clothes and other more personal items that he'd brought over as well.

Basically, when George had finally been set up, it appeared as if he was taking residence in a storage closet. And he honestly wouldn't have had it any other way.

The last ultimatum that Ms. Lynch left George would most likely be proven to be a bit more onerous than the other two. Even before mentioning anything about the shop or returning to the Burrow, Velveeta (George liked to mentally repeat her name over-and-over to himself, though she'd given him a premeditated demand when they first met to try to keep from something like that, as it gave him a good chuckle) gave him the stern direction to a least _gently_ _pursue_ to find some common ground with Sandy.

"She is, after all, your _girlfriend_." She'd said; giving him a sarcastically-pasted quarter-smile, emphasizing the **G**-word since she knew it bothered him, damn her.

George knew this burdening assignment was not predisposed to be easy in any way. His and Sandy's relationship had been tense at best ever since he'd snapped at her during one of the innumerable funerals sometime mid-May and, after being the one to catch him in the act of cutting and then caring for him following the discovery, Sandy had taken to avoiding him again as she had when he'd jumped down her throat in between the ceremonies. Oh, there were a few exchanges and snippets of conversation between them now-and-then, but that was mostly her asking where he'd like her to put his junk she'd just Apparated in from his flat or her inquiring as to whether he was doing alright in that agonizingly sympathetic tone. And, most of the time, it was her that did a lot of the talking with George just nodding, grunting, and speaking at the appropriate intervals.

The instances when she wasn't carrying in suitcases of his stuff she spent mainly locked up in Ginny's room. Sometimes she did this with Hermione, sometimes with Fleur (to whom Sandy had seemed to gravitate her need for a role model towards ever since Shepherd died in battle), or sometimes with Ginny herself.

There was one night following the days subsequent to when George had at last been able to establish residence in the house when he was walking past Ginny's door on his way to the stairs that would take him to the second floor. He'd immediately jerked to a halt when he'd heard his name randomly crop up. He literally backed himself up and, bad boy to the bone, put his one ear up against the red-colored wooden panel.

Yup, they were definitely talking about him in there. He could tell, with a little guess-work, which voice was Hermione's and which was Ginny's (he wondered if it was a sad thing could not recognize his own sister over someone else), but Sandy's he could pick out in a crowded King's Cross Station. He ought to be able to, having known her for seven, friggin' years. The tone of the young woman in question was worried, much to George's slight curiosity.

"I'm so scared for him." He had heard her say. "We can't lose him like Fred, you two. _I_ can't lose him. …I'm _so_ lost about what to do…" She'd gone quiet after that, though from contemplation or from being unable to speak through silent tears that he could not see outside the door, George knew naught and he'd continued on his way upstairs. There was no way that even _he_ could stand listening to a conversation like that, no matter the fact that it was about him.

Though Sandy did eventually warm up to him a little bit in the weeks postdating that night, there was still moments of extreme rigidness between the two of them. It was like they both had just met for the first time (although, once he recalled, their real introduction as children wasn't nearly as awkward as this) or, better yet, were having to _reacquaint_ themselves with one another again after being apart for years. It was all just a bizarre and surreal adjustment for all of them.

Things ultimately quieted down, however, and, almost all-to-soon, the transition from June-to-July was drawing upon them. George occupied his days in sotto voce, a little bored, but he had his joke shop materials to keep him busy and entertained.

A stiff and timid calm spread over the house once everything was all-said-and-done, but it all unraveled the morning of June twenty-sixth, nineteen ninety-eight.

* * *

A/N: Short chapter, but I promise I'll have a much longer one for everyone to enjoy next time. ^_^

And if anybody is curious as to the order of Velveeta Lynch's suggestions, they're:

1. Find common ground with Sandy.

2. Take time off of work from WWW.

3. Move back into and stay at the Burrow until furthur notice.

I know by the way I wrote the chapter, the arrangement is kind of confusing, but try to look at it backwards. In the ch., the order goes from 3-1, but, in actuality, getting on better terms w/ Sandy is George's first task and returning to the Burrow is last. A little bit of helpful trivia for anyone who needs or wants it. :)

Please, Read & Review!


	6. June 26th: Downhill

**XWarningX: **There might be quite a bit of OOC-ness in this chapter. Read at own risk. :S

**Downhill**

* * *

June 26th:

Harry proposed to Ginny at breakfast; just as the sun was peeking in the kitchen window and everyone was sitting down to eat. George honestly didn't know what exactly had possessed him to do it right then. The red-haired man had been sitting in what had usually been Fred's seat (Hey, he was certifiably insane now, yeah?) right next to his father placed at the right-hand head of the table. Arthur had the _Daily Prophet_ open in front of him over his plate, reading while his enchanted fork magically stuck its prongs into bits of food and brought it helpfully up to his mouth. George kept sneaking glances over at Sandy on the other side and a little to his left next to Hermione, the two girls chatting up a storm. His mother went around cooking and cleaning all at the same time while humming an unfamiliar tune under her breath.

They were all just honestly minding their own business (besides George, who was minding both his _and _Sandy's businesses), when suddenly Harry, who'd been somewhat quiet – which hadn't been really unusual for him as of late since he'd destroyed Voldemort -- violently scooted his chair back so hard the feet at the bottoms of the legs made a loud honking across the hardwood. He then stood up and turned to glare straight down at Ginny sitting next him at his left…and then nothing for at least a good three minutes. Ginny stared right back, looking especially alarmed.

Everyone went silent at this point, all of them watching Harry with slight apprehension. They wondered if he was going to, for some reason, yell at Ginny, maybe _attack _her, snog her, spontaneously combust, or maybe even all four. Bill, Fleur, Charlie, and Percy, who'd been allowed to eat in the living room on the account that the kitchen was crowded and they were kind enough to give up seats in favor of the younger witches and wizards, snuck in around the corner of the crooked staircase at the commotion. They were all just as wide-eyed as everyone else probably was.

No one dared to move for a few, aggravating seconds.

It was finally Mrs. Weasley who tentatively broke the tense quiet.

"Harry…?" She ventured, but said no more than that, lest the Boy Wonder really should inevitably blow up (in the literal sense). Harry Potter gave no clear indication that he'd heard her. Instead, he quickly bent to take a hold of a shocked Ginny's small, right hand before straighten up again

"Everyone… I have an announcement to make." He said at last, still gazing at Ginny, his expression having softened to one of adoration. The silence in the room became suffocating with curiosity. Even George was sitting on the edge of his chair. Harry had gone mute again, apparently having lost his cool after startling everyone with an initially bold display of something that _might _be romantic. He seemed to have misplaced his nerve, however, and was going back-and-forth from reaching down to grab Ginny's other hand while dropping the one he currently held and then repeating the jittery action over-and-over again.

It was getting to the mark where George wanted to burst out laughing maniacally at the increasingly humiliating scene.

He really didn't know why, though. Evidently, not only did the loss of his twin make him go crazy, but also unmistakably left him a very cruel person.

"Ginny…" Harry at last piped up softly, drawing George out of his cynical reverie about his recent personality quirks. "I know our relationship hasn't always been the easiest. I've forever had one-thing-or-another coming after me to chop off my head for a wall display and you've had to wait for me for five or six years, but, through it all, you've refused to leave my side and have fought right next to me through at least two battles that I could think of. You're brave, smart, kind, sometimes a bit stubborn and blunt, but you're a good friend and I love you from the bottom of my heart." The bespeckled boy paused here to unexpectedly dropped down to one knee, still clutching hard to Ginny's hand.

Everyone in the entire room sucked in an audible breath of air. George was sure they would all fill up like balloons and float to the ceiling from the amazement of the moment. Ginny herself was speechless, only able to hold herself erect in her chair by sheer force of will and even _that_ was somewhat lacking. She hadn't even been able to find the sense of mind to grab back at Harry's hand in return, but her black-haired boyfriend did not seem to mind this.

"I guess what I'm trying to say here, Ginny, is… I've been so…_very_ lucky…to have found you and your family, as all of you have made me feel more wanted…and more loved than I've been in my entire life." He paused here for a moment, scrunching up his lips in thought before turning to throw a look over his shoulder at Sandy and Hermione, who were watching the scene with just as must interest as everyone else was. "Of course, I'm including you guys in that category, too, ya know?" He said sweetly, as if he'd assumed he had offended them by not mentioning their names at first. Hermione and Sandy didn't have to glance at one another to time their reactions perfectly together. They both began motioning vigorously with their hands and shaking their heads simultaneously at their best friend, quietly telling him that they weren't annoyed with him and to get on with the bloody speech he was currently bungling by stopping to speak to them.

Harry got the message and hastily turned back to Ginny, the light of reverence back in his eyes.

"_Anyway_… Ginny...believe me when I say that you're probably the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Any wizard would be lucky to have you as a wife. So…" He once again trailed off, originally agitating George, as the now non-twin was getting a little fed up with the delay Harry kept creating with his deliberate hesitations. George shoved his exasperated feelings aside as he noticed Harry reach into the pocket of his Muggle trousers and pull out a small, square, maroon box, dropping Ginny's hand at last to cradle the tiny object in his palms.

Ginny, now having the full use of both of her own hands, brought them over her mouth with a discernible slap and her caramel-brown orbs widened about a fraction more than they already were. Everyone (excluding George) gasped again when they, too, saw what exactly it was that he'd extracted. Harry smiled shakily, obviously scared out of his wits. He pushed through it, though, and finally pulled back the box's lid. Resting inside on a blindingly red, silk cushion was a brilliant, white-gold wedding band engraved with a leafy design across the visible top and little, sparkling rubies interspersed between the tips of the leaves.

Ginny's hands fell uselessly from their position over her lips and she let out an accidental, but very understandable scream; her expression appearing absolutely gob-smacked. Harry let out a shy laugh and, somewhere in the kitchen behind everybody else sitting at the table, Mrs. Weasley began to sob uncontrollably out of happiness. Harry once more ignored the Weasley matron and took the ring from its container, which he placed up on the tabletop next to his forgotten breakfast plate. He then located Ginny's left hand and slipped the little circlet on to her ring-finger before fully enclosing her appendage with his again and was still once more.

George rolled his eyes without really meaning to.

*_Will you go ahead and propose already, you slow git!_*

As if he'd mentally heard George in his brain, Harry cleared his throat, looking timidly into Ginny's eyes.

"Ginevra Molly Weasley…_Ginny_… Would you do me the honor of making me that lucky wizard --?" He didn't genuinely get to finish before his new fiancé was throwing herself on him and knocking them both straight to the ground amidst a torrent of, "Yes, yes, yes!" raining from her mouth.

Everything erupted all at once. Mrs. Weasley lost her balance from the shock and landed on her plump bottom next the stove, but she didn't seem to care. She was still too busy crying hysterically from the astounding turn of events. Her husband jumped up (along with everyone else) and ran over to help her to her feet, laughing his arse off in his own joy. All of the others in the room ran over to the couple that had never gotten up from the floor, as they had lost themselves in an impromptu make-out session in their delight. They were interrupted rudely when Bill grabbed Harry by the scuff of the neck and yanked him out from under Ginny while Fleur and Hermione both bent to pick the red-haired girl up under the arms and pulled her to her feet, the two of them beaming like idiots. Streams of congratulations came at the duo all at once and from all sides, but they only had eyes for each other. They embraced so numerously, George, lurking in the back of the crowd, had failed to count how many they shared.

Wedding plans were suddenly being made before anyone knew the subject had even come up and it was, not surprisingly, Mrs. Weasley who decided that they would have the wedding next June once Ginny graduated from Hogwarts and the long wait in between could be used to make preparations. Not really listening as they continued to focus one another, Harry and Ginny just nodded robotically with dazed grins on their faces.

By now, George was beginning to feel a little over-whelmed with all of the happy emotions swimming around the kitchen and it made him feel constricted. He had gotten used to the weeks of silence and semi-solitude (as everyone, including Sandy at times, had taken to giving him a wide berth whenever they got around him, even if it was for a conversation), and then it was abruptly pulled out by the roots in light of Harry's daring proclamation of ultimate devotion to his younger sister. No one was really paying attention to him, too preoccupied as they were with the aforementioned lovebirds to even care that he was in the room, per se, but it still unnerved him and all he wanted to do was either find a distraction or run up to his room to hide in mountains of paperwork that had to do with the shop…

His prayer was seemingly answered by a loud knock at the kitchen door that everyone somehow managed to hear over the ruckus of excited shouting and they all stared at the closed entrance way and the blurred figure they could see through the windows installed in the wood. After a second or two, Percy, the ever diligent and attentive son, broke out of the pack of celebrating Weasleys (and Sandy, Hermione, and Harry) and grasped at the doorknob, turning it and pulling open the door to reveal a tall, slender, dark-haired woman about George's age. Her almost waist-length hair was braided all around, giving the appearance that there were black cords stuck in her head, and was tied half-up with a satin, scarlet ribbon. She had on a weather-worn, cinnamon-colored traveling cloak made of light-weight velvet, wore Muggle clothing underneath that no one could really see under her robes, and her shoes were no more than well-broken-in boots. Her chocolate eyes with little dashes of crimson gazed around at everyone, looking a little timorous as she suddenly became aware that she had interrupted something.

"Um… Yeah, hi, er… Is G-George here? I'm Angelina Johnson. I was in Gryffindor with most of you…" She glanced pointedly at Fleur when she said this. "Anyway, I know it's been a couple of weeks since I…last seen all of you, but I was curious about how George'd had been since…the ceremony, and I was just stopping by to make…sure…he was…okay…" She trailed off, getting a little shy when everyone refused to say anything back.

After a couple of seconds, however, George finally stepped slowly out from behind Percy, giving Angelina a wide-eyed look that appeared as if he'd just recognized his schoolmate that he'd known ever since his first year of Hogwarts and had been his teammate on the Gryffindor Quidditch team for six of those years.

"A-Angelina?" He stammered, inching toward her slowly as if approaching a dangerous animal instead of a good friend. "W-what are you doing here? Not t-that I'm not glad to see you, i-it's just…you've n-never come over here before…" George shook his head vivaciously to get his ability to speak up-and-running in tip-top shape again, then turned back to Angelina. "I'm sorry, that was a stupid greeting. How have you been, Angie?" He asked as politely as he could this time and went over to hug the dark, young witch. She received him amicably despite his botched first attempt, smiling warmly as the two of them wrapped their arms around each other tightly, neither one taking into account the slightly jealous flush on the cheeks of a certain auburn-haired (dyed black) female from across the room.

"I'm doing alright, mate, I'm doing alright." She laughed, the sound as comforting as an old blanket in George's ear. "I just stopped by to check up on you, heard you had some difficulties dealing with…some _stuff_." She paused awkwardly here as if to make sure she didn't bring up anything bad by saying that. George decided to brush it off, as he was genuinely excited to see her. Angelina continued after taking in a deep, relieved sigh when no one scolded her for her words. "Anyhow… So, I seem to have walked in on a celebration. What's the occasion for such a big party?" She inquired, gesturing with a hand towards the throng of people around the breakfast table, all up and tangled around each other as if they'd only now finished a cuddle-fest.

George looked back at the knot of all of his family members, plus Hermione, Harry, and Sandy, with a startled expression, as if he'd just recalled that they were even there. He then let out a loud laugh, the first one in ages. The sonancy of it got everyone in the huddled group to start looking at each other strangely, as if afraid that he might _actually _be going mad, and the blush on Sandy's face got even redder at the fact that she didn't have anything (or, at least, not much) to do with his apparent, momentary mirth. Was not his reason to be joyful… She ducked a little behind Hermione's back and snuck around Charlie and Ron on her path to the stairs to quietly make her way back to Ginny's bedroom to be alone to think and to avoid seeing anything that might unfold that would likely make her more upset.

No one bothered to mention her absence, as no one had seen her leave.

George at last grew quite again, flicking away a happy-tear from the corner of his right eye with a pointer finger, returning his blue orbs to Angelina still grinning at him.

"No, no you're not interrupting anything, Angie, love… Why don't you come in and sit a spell." He halted his tongue and thought about the last syllable of his sentence before bursting out laughing once more. "Ha, ha! Geddit, guys? Angelina's a witch and I just asked her to 'sit a spell.'" He closed his eyes and held the stitch in his side as he giggled a bit insanely. "Let's just hope the 'spell' doesn't do anything to her buttocks, yes? We wouldn't want her to leave missing a half, do we?" He knew it was the lamest joke he'd ever made in his career as a prankster and comedian, but, since he'd hadn't cracked one for such a long time, he figured that anything was better than nothing.

Everyone regained their mobility as they realized that it was a _good_ thing that George was poking fun at something again, however pathetically, and they all began talking and doing things at once. Mrs. Weasley, taking George's example, waved Angelina to bring herself inside for a cup of tea and a spot of breakfast. She quickly whipped up another batch of food for the army of people around her table, since the previous had all gone cold. Angie, being friendly and sociable, went around hugging and saying hello to her companions occupying the room, including Harry, Ginny, and Ron, who'd all at some point been on the Quidditch team with her or George. Harry and Ginny informed her of their engagement that had commenced not even ten minutes ago and she'd squealed and embraced them both again, insisting how ecstatic she was for them.

Things went smoothly through the rest of the meal, conversation staying light and off the topic of depressing subjects. Harry and Ginny finished early and went outside to spend time alone to "process" their impending, future wedding together in the garden. George only had eyes for Angelina as they reminisced about the peaceful ol' days when it was just them, Fred, Lee Jordan, Alicia Spinnet, Katie Bell, and Oliver Wood (the former captain of the Gryffindor Quiddtch team) and waded through the memories of all of the crazy stuff they'd done in school. George had never thought about how much he'd missed the dark-woman chatting outgoingly with him, sitting on his right. They'd always been close friends at Hogwarts, but, once he and Fred had escaped the castle, Angelina had graduated, things with the war heating up, and all of the blasted funerals, there had not been much time for reconnecting with old pals. It really felt good to the red-haired man to pal around with her. It felt very nice.

Had he not been so involved with Angelina's visit, he might have noticed the now empty chair next to Hermione.

* * *

"So, before we were so taken in the glorious mess that is your family, I ask again, George. How have you been?" Angelina inquired brightly as George closed the door of his (and Fred's) room behind them. They'd come up here to have a private chat together, in spite of George's mother nagging that she wasn't comfortable with them being alone together in a place so…_personal_. George tried to argue by bringing in Hermione's and Sandy's names as an advantage, as both women had spent numerous times in the twin's bedroom, but Mrs. Weasley would have none of it and directed them to the living room, where'd they be in plain sight of the three eldest Weasley boys still lounging in there even after breakfast was over and, therefore, would not have any solitude whatsoever.

The two friends sat rigidly side-by-side on the couch as Bill, Charlie, and Percy jawed away in front of them, the men going over subjects like the Ministry post-Voldemort and Quidditch and not paying attention to them at all. George and Angelina were eventually able to sneak their way upstairs when the trio of oldest red-heads were deep in conversation about Charlie's dangerous work with dragons and while Mrs. Weasley was too busy washing dishes to pay attention to their rule-breaking.

Angie had never had a chance to see the twin's room before and was twisting her neck around as she inspected everything from the four towers of boxes in the corners to the old burn-marks of Fred and George's failed experiments. Once it appeared that she was satisfied with her cursory tour, she looked over to George, beaming in such a way that he'd never seen on her. He quirked an eyebrow, as if trying to assess her somewhat new and odd personality, then motioned towards Fred's bed to see if she would like to have a seat, as his own was under siege by mounds of paperwork and junk of the like.

"Oh, I've been more-or-less alright, I guess. Go on and rest yourself, Ang. After that workout sprinting up the staircase in the duration of when my mum kept her back turned, you might need it." He said with a soft laugh as he moved in the direction of his bed and pushed back some of his notes to make room for himself to sit. Angelina just nodded and pranced over to take the proffered seat, flopping down on to Fred's old bedspread as if it were some random beanbag chair at a teenaged-wizard hangout. George furrowed his eyebrows this time around and gave a questioning frown. "You've seemed kind of perky ever since you have showed up. What's going on with you?" He asked point-blank, crossing his arms over his chest.

Angelina grinned even wider, if it were possible, and began to quickly taking untie the drawstrings around her throat to shred her travel cloak, as if trying to get comfortable as she started to explain what she'd been doing for the past few weeks since she'd last seen him before Fred's funeral.

"Oh, yeah, I've been _dying _to tell you everything since I got here! You know when you gave Fred's eulogy at the funeral – sorry, I know you probably don't like to be reminded – but you remember, right?" She said in a hurried tone as she threw off the cloak on to the sheets next to her and revealed the light-colored Muggle "jeans" and white T-shirt with a yellow alchemy symbol pictured on it that she was wearing. "Well, you see, after giving that speech for your twin brother, it kind of hit me… I was never going to see that goofy, freckled prat again and it tore me up… So, when the ceremonies were over-and-done with that day, I went to the London Bridge that afternoon and…and…" She suddenly grew quiet and reserved, a complete 180 degrees from the talkative person who came on a pleasure call and socialized with the other Weasleys downstairs. It was as if she were now reluctant to share her story with someone she used to be so comfortable with.

George was getting concerned about his former schoolmate (and perhaps a little suspicious as well) and he began to understand that her chumminess from before was just a front to mask her true insecurities. He quirked the same eyebrow he did before to show his confusion.

"And you what, Angie…? C'mon, it's me. You can tell me anything." He said as he took his arms from their position at his chest and perched his elbows upon his knees so that his hands dangled off the ends. Angelina gave a flicker of a smile, but then looked down into her lap. She couldn't even gaze him in the eye.

"I…I… Oh, this is gonna sound so silly of me, considering how I was in… I went to the bridge…thinking I might do myself a favor by getting rid of the pain of Fred's death by throwing myself into the Thames." She admitted at last, beginning to fidget nervously and had taken up the habit of wringing her hands together in a way that was eerily familiar to George. His bottom jaw dropped open and a bout of nausea erupted in his stomach.

*_I can't believe it… Angelina Johnson wanting to take an easy way out of something. I guess I wasn't the only one screwed up by certain events._*

"Angelina… You-you tried to commit _suicide_?" He asked incredulously, voicing a part his previous thoughts. The woman in front of him winced as if he'd burned her with his astonished words and George suspected that if her skin was not so dark, he'd be able to see a blush as red as a tomato running across her cheeks.

"If you p-put it in that tone, you make it sounds a whole lot…_worse_ than it actually was." She joked, giving a nervous chuckle. George envied her ability to make even _insert_

one into such dismal conference, as that type of thing was supposed to be his forte. He shook the disrespectful thoughts out of his head and focused once more on Angelina.

"But… Angie, _why_?" Was the only thing he could come up with in the form of a sentence. Angie sighed and shrugged heavily, her body still twitching around of its own accord.

"I-I _know_ it was a stupid idea, George, but I… I don't know. Once I came to the realization that I'd never see Fred's cocky smirk again, I…just _lost _it. I know it's most likely been harder for you, but, I mean, this had been the guy that took me to the Yule Ball and snogged me on the castle roof in weather that was thirty below! And I dated him for a year and, oh, all of the good times with the team... Anyway, like I was saying, I was just standing there over-looking the Thames, so close to just leaping over. If it hadn't been for Oliver and Katie sneaking up on me – oh, they had stalked me all the way from the graveyard – I might have discovered the nerve to take the plunge, so to speak." She paused once more; finally raising her sights to George's to gauge his reaction to her tale, but still refused to meet his eyes directly.

George closed his mouth and his lips became a thin line. He said nothing, however, not wishing to interrupt Angie in her recounting of her time spent in the last month. Angelina could "hear" his unspoken signal for her to continue and she cleared her throat before doing just that.

"So, yeah, after convincing me that killing myself was an idiotic idea – among _other _things – Oliver and Katie practically drug me back to my folks and my mum and poppa immediately started trying to find me some 'help.'" She lifted her hands until they came level with her ears and hoisted up her first two fingers on each, waggling all four in succession around her last syllable in a strange gesture that George did not understand, but he remained silent. "The following week, my mother broke into my flat and woke me up at the butt-crack of dawn to go meet something called 'therapist' all the way in Liverpool." An expression that was extremely out of place on her face snaked across her countenance and she glared at George with iron in her chocolate-crimson orbs.

George, though his ear had perked at Angie's mention of the terms "therapist" and "Liverpool," gave no indication that he knew crap of what she was talking about. If he wasn't really paying attention to her story before, though, he sure was now.

"Soooo… How did it go? Visiting this therapist?" He mentally tried to put imaginary quotations around the utterance of therapist to make him seem innocent, but he didn't know if it worked. Angelina quirked her own dark eyebrow this time.

"It was…_interesting_, to say the least. The woman I'm seeing, Velveeta Lynch? (George nearly had a Muggle aneurism when she said the name) I think she's one twig short on a broomstick, if you know what I'm talking about. She seemed serious about her job and about helping me, but I also think she _enjoys _the fact that I'm not all well up here…" Angelina pointed at her temple, indicating her brain as if George didn't have a clue what she meant. George himself had to keep from rolling his blue orbs skyward at the _very _accurate description of Ms. Lynch.

"So, did it assist you any, going to see her?" He was still attempting to keep Angie in the dark about his own problems, but curiosity pushed him to find out whether his blonde-haired therapist was the same with all of her patients, or if he and Angie were just special because they had magic in their blood like Velveeta did. Angelina gave a grimace at his question.

"Well… _Only in so many words_." She said through her teeth. "She not only lends her services to wizards, but also to Muggles, so that kind of perturbed me from the start – not that Muggles are a bad thing, of course… -- and she sort of…'let loose' the information that she has several students from Hogwarts that had a hand in the last battle there. She says the fighting affected a lot of people's minds and…that a couple were almost clinically impaired with hallucinations and flashbacks from their ordeals and losing loved ones. It's pretty horrible." The glint of iron was back in her stare as she looked at George again, as if expecting him to admit something scandalous if she glared long, hard, and scary enough.

George stood his ground under the grim mug she gave him, shrugging his right shoulder to show his empathy to her situation.

"Sounds like a kook, that one does." He said simply, matching up to her stare levelly. "That aside, though, has she given you any good advice at all about your situation? You know, to benefit you in moving on and getting well again?"

The stony mask on Angelina's features crumpled again and she sighed for the second time, standing up from her establishment on Fred's bed and brushing down the front of her shirt to straighten out any wrinkles she had collected since putting it on this morning. She then crossed the narrow space between the mattresses and slumped down by George's side following a second where she pushed back more of his notes. She stared blankly ahead towards his dresser that leaned a bit too far to its left for a moment before snapping her gaze to the red-haired man next to her.

"A few things." Was the initial sentence to pop out of her mouth. "I told her of my flat in London that I bought after leaving school and how, in the days following the battle, it's since been feeling like I'm suffocating in there. Like the ghosts of Death Eaters are haunting me, choking me in my sleep…" She trailed off here, lowering her eyes to what George sensed might his lips before quickly bring them back up. "George… She-she's suggested that I move out of the city, out of London, and maybe taking up residence in the countryside until I can get my bearings. …And…I think I'm going follow it." She halted here to let her words sink into his cranium, her look now soft instead of razor sharp.

George just glared back, not exactly sure what to say or to even care. The conversation was getting tedious, especially with the bringing up of old wounds and suicides and Ms. Lynch. He had been excited to Angelina when she first showed up on the Burrow's doorstep – now he wasn't certain…

"…Where do you suspect you'll go?" He asked slowly, a tad reluctantly. Angelina shrugged her right shoulder; brushing it up against George's left.

"My aunt lives in Wales – a little cottage in the village of Ffrith, in Flintshire. I'm might end up there. It'll be quiet and definitely as far away from here and everything having to do with depressing stuff as I can get without actually having to move across the Channel or something…" She quieted again, cocking her head in what she must have thought was a cute way, but in the manner that George'd had always known her, it didn't work on her. He didn't say anything about it.

"Don't you have a job here, though? Family and other friends?" He asked politely to get her focus to ease up on him a bit. Angelina blinked, as if she'd forgotten what they'd been talking about for a second, but then she shook her head violently, cordlike braids flying everywhere and whacking George almost painfully across the cheeks.

"Oh! Well…I do have a few, odd, temporary things here-and-there, but nothing major that would hinder me into staying here. My ultimate dream is to play on some nationally, or maybe even internationally, famous Quidditch team, but those kinds of goals take a lot of hard work that I don't have time for usually and a lot of luck, of course. As for friends and family, my parents were the ones to get me into 'therapy' from the get-go, so they're hiding their true feelings by being all gung-ho – Muggle term – about it. And since Katie and Oliver were the ones to prevent me from jumping into the river, they think it's a good idea, too. Alicia says it's not fair, but that she'll support me on it and Lee… I have not seen Lee for a long time now…" She finally turned away from him then, instead giving her attention to his hands still dangling off the tips of his knees.

George nodded, despite knowing she couldn't see at this second. He wanted to say…_something_…ANYTHING to quell the abruptly awkward tension stifling the room and the occupants within it now. Even a simple, "How long?" or "Will you keep in touch?" would suffice, but George could not seem to think of anything to say. …Except for two, little words that spoke volumes and yet also were just as empty as if he would have said nothing at all.

"I'm sorry…" The apology came out as a whisper so soft, it might as well been a hint of a breeze that snuck in through the cracks of the window between the two beds. Somehow, though, Angelina heard it and she brought her face back to George's, her chocolate eyes searching his in a fashion that made what little light they had in the room reflect off of the tiny flecks of crimson in them, making them stand out more.

"For what?" She questioned in such a deep, disbelieving voice, George almost laughed, but he held his tongue to prevent it from bursting forth.

"For everything, I guess. I'm sorry for the pain you're going through. I'm sorry you have to see this therapist. I'm sorry you're not doing well up here." He tapped his temple like she had earlier. "I'm sorry for not coming to see you often enough the past few weeks. I'm sorry we never really got to speak during the funerals in May. …And I'm sorry that I have forgotten that it wasn't just me that lost Fred… A lot of people have. You as well." He stopped here, mentally checking off the list in his head to make sure he'd gotten all what he was supposed to vocally compensate for.

Angelina furrowed her eyebrows, but not in confusion. It was more of a sympathetic adoration she held for his inspection this time.

"Oh, George, sweetie… Hunny, you don't have to redeem yourself with me for something that's probably been a lot more of a run through hell for _you _than it has _me_." She said, her smile and tone becoming bright once more since they'd entered the room and had sat down. George, suddenly a bit confused by what she was saying, furrowed his eyebrows again and frowned so deeply, it felt as if his lips were in danger of peeling off.

"What do you mean?" He asked dumbly, honestly confounded. Angelina huffed good-naturedly and gave him a look somewhere between knowing, amused, and exasperation, then reached out to grab him by his left hand; the top her head bumping him under the chin. Before George could prevent her, she pushed back the sleeve of his off-white thermal, revealing the jagged, criss-crossed scars on his pale, freckly skin, still starkly red from when he first created them at the end of May.

George sighed morosely and raised his gaze to Angelina's, who was grinning like the cat character from that Muggle book about a girl named Alice that went to some other world he'd forgotten the name of (his mother used to read that to him and his siblings all the time when they were little, neither never minding that it was a Muggle fairytale).

"How long have you known?" He asked curtly. Angelina tossed a thicket of black, corded hair over her shoulder.

"When Ms. Lynch mentioned her patients from Hogwarts, you were at the top of her list." She bit her bottom lip to keep her smile from returning. "I think she might have a soft spot for you, George." She giggled a smidgen too girlishly for the red-haired man's liking.

*_Lucky me_…* His conscious said deadpanly and he truthfully couldn't agree more with himself. "Angie, why didn't you say something the moment we were alone?" He then asked a bit aggravatedly, feeling somewhat irked that she didn't come out with her knowledge of just how far he'd fallen outright. I mean, weren't therapists like Ms. Lynch supposed to keep their patients' identities and their issues _private_, or did that only count for the SANE species?

Angelina's compassionate expression returned and she cocked her head slightly to the left as she placed a dark-skinned hand tenderly on his shoulder. George flinched from the suddenness of the contact and, for a minute, wanted to shake her loose, but made himself stay still. "I kind of did coming into the house, but then I found out about Harry proposing to Ginny in, like, the five seconds before I showed up and I figured it'd be best to wait for you to just tell me yourself. Then we were delayed coming up here and you didn't say anything when we were finally by ourselves, so I decided to just ease into it by telling you my own story. …Oh, George, why didn't you come talk to me or something when you started feeling like this? I would have tried to help you through it, too!" The affectionate look was gone and replaced by one of rejection and a tad betrayal. George, feeling guilt rise up like a lead balloon in his stomach when he recalled her saying something about "difficulties" upon arrival, turned away from her and stared down into his lap.

*_Because you weren't one of the people I was…thinking about most of the time._* His brain wanted to admit to her, as a flash of both Fred's _and _Sandy's images streaked across his mind, but he chickened out and instead said, "Because…I didn't really think you'd understand. Fred wasn't a sibling to you, Ang, and you two definitely would be the weirdest twins I'd have ever seen, if that were the case, but… It's just complicated. If I'd have known you had the same emotions as I did, you'd have probably been the first person I would have turned to." He finished with a sappy half-smile.

*_Liar…_* His mind quipped boredly.

Angelina's eyes widened and a strange, doe-eyed look of reverence slid over her face in lieu of the previously crushed countenance. This unnerved George to the point of leaning away a tad. It reminded him of the one Harry had given Ginny _just _before he gave her the ring…

His suspicion was returning, along with a torrent of disturbing spine tingles.

"That's…so sweet of you, George." She said in a breathy voice with slivers of headiness leaking into her words. The hand that was still resting on George's shoulder began sliding upwards. "You were always the kind, gentile one, you know? I cared deeply about Fred, but it's not like I never noticed that, despite the fact you two were identical, you have some…_endearing _qualities that set's you apart." The hand came high enough for George to see her touched-up nails and he became increasingly bothered by her constantly changing demeanors.

"Um… T-thanks, Angelina…I think." He replied through a gulp. She was beginning to get a little too close for comfort.

Angelina raked her chocolate eyes that seemed to grow dark with something predatory up-and-down George's still-emaciated body in full view of him, sticking her amazingly-pink tongue and swiping it across her brown lips.

"You look _so _much like him, though. You really do, George…" She said huskily, her hand that was attached to George immediately dipping downwards to grasp on to a fistful of his thermal to prevent escape. George didn't have to have a name to know who she meant and something instinctive told him it was time to shove her out of his bedroom.

"Er, Angie? …Angelina? Uh, I've got to tell you, I-I have a…a, uh… Well, I, um…" He was going to tell her about his something-of-a-relationship with Sandy, but he couldn't get the usually auburn-haired witch's name out in his nervous state. And Angelina did have one, _hearty_ grip on his shirt. Damn her Quidditch Chaser skills…

He knew it was Angelina who instigated it first, but he was seriously powerless to stop her. Her lips crashed over his so violently, it knocked him back and almost off of the bed, but he managed to swerve to his right just in time; their bodies crunching up his paperwork littered all over the sheets in the attempt. He wrestled with her for a second, but then she climbed on top of him and pinned him down with her athletic prowess. Had he been in top form as well, he might have been able to fight back more efficiently, but, in his weakened state, he was helpless.

After a few moments of her forcing a make-out on him, however, George's mind began to get hazy. He may have not liked Angelina in the way she _seemed _to like him (nor had he ever have), but she was a DAMN good kisser. And, not only did her eyes look like crimson-dyed chocolate, but she _tasted_ like chocolate, too. It was not long before he started to kiss back earnestly.

She allowed him to switch the positions and George soon was the one hovering over and straddling her. All thoughts of poor Sandy flew out of his mind through his one ear and he foolishly threw caution to the wind…

A knock came at the door five-minutes following and George reluctantly took his mouth away from Angelina's to look at the wooden-panel leading out into the hallway. The move would have made his senses replenish themselves, but then he heard Angelina's rough voice telling him to, "Ignore it…" and she clutched hard on to the collar of his thermal, dragging him back down to her. He was lost again within milliseconds.

Another knock, this time a bit louder, but George disregarded it like suggested and began inching his lips downward on Angelina's dark throat. On the inside, though, his hormones were having an all-out war with his conscious, which was berating him that there was someone else he should remember. Someone who cared for, maybe even _loved_, him and who he secretly had sentiment for as well, and her name was bubbling up in his throat. He knew it wasn't Angie's, but wanted to call out the nomen so bad. It was on the tip of his tongue and he was drawing away from the collarbone that belonged to the woman under him to take a breath…

Angelina beat him to the punch by miles.

"F-Fred…" She moaned emphatically, rolling her hips upwards into his. George's eyes snapped open, however, stopping his ministrations all together. He raised his head again and bored his blue orbs down into Angelina's, who glared up at him in complete disbelief and unsatisfaction, not knowing what she'd just done. George's reciprocated the expression with a contemptuous one of his own.

"What…did you just call me?" He questioned heavily, adding a growl to his tone for effect. Angelina had to think about his inquiry for a moment, but then her facial features crumpled in horror as she abruptly realized what had happened. George's oracles flashed at her as if to say, "Yeah, _now_ you get it!"

Both of them stared each other for what felt like ages, speechless; Angelina being too shocked and embarrassed by her blunder in the heat of moment and George was _way _to angry at himself for giving into her obvious fantasies of using him as substitute for his dead twin brother, whom she had always had a thing for, even though George knew Fred's attraction for the girl (he refused to think of her as a "woman" right now) had never really grown passed just that…attraction. Attraction and friendship.

Angelina's bottom lip quivered and she looked about to say something when the door to the corridor was suddenly thrown open in a way that implied that someone had used their foot on it. Neither George, nor Angelina had time to jump away from one another before Sandy was beholding the incriminating scene with honey eyes narrowed in betrayal and glistening with tears. Her arms were stiffly at her sides and her war-scarred hands were balled into fists. Her black-dyed hair almost seemed to be spiking out of its own accord, like a dog might do when it was about to attack.

George could only stare at his "girlfriend" in wide-eyed, sick surprise, his mouth agape. Angelina was still trapped underneath him and was only able to see Sandy upside down by craning her neck back until her head was nearly vertical on the bedspread. Despite knowing she was taller than Sandy by at least a head and was more athletic, Angelina appeared downright scared of the younger woman.

No one moved for a few, tense beats. The nausea in George's stomach was boiling and he honestly just wanted to throw up. Maybe if he tried talking to her…

"Sandy…" He began cautiously, only to wince when the very female he was trying to speak to interrupted.

"Shove any apology you're about to give me up your arse, Weasley." Sandy snarled venomously as she turned furiously on her heels and immediately began charging back down to the first floor towards Ginny's room. George cursed in an ungentlemanly fashion and sprang off of his bed, forgetting Angelina for the time being and leaving her there amongst his wrinkled notes and bills. He practically flew out of his door and down the hall in about two seconds and took the stairs four at a time to reach the landing below in less time than that. He paused to see the light coming through the unblocked entranceway of Ginny's appointed space and crossed over to it.

"Sandy…?" He tried again carefully, but had to stop once more to avoid a flying pillow that had shot out through the doorframe as if done so out of a cannon. It must have been thrown magically, for after hitting the wall opposite the Ginny's door, it ricocheted, hitting the barriers making up the first floor hallway before sacrificially tossing itself over the stair banister into the living room below.

Deciding to turn a deaf _ear _on his mother's cantankerous shout of, "Who pitched this pillow over the railing!!?" George, after taking a deep breath to gather his courage, nervously peeked his head around the edge of the doorframe for the second time, alert for anything else that might be propelled at his head so that he could duck and run away at a moment's notice (especially if the objects happened to be something _much_ harder than a mere bed cushion). He gradually came to the conclusion that he was safe from an airborne attack once he was able to reach Hermione's fold-up cot. Reassured, he glanced to his right to find Sandy just slamming down the lid of her large trunk, having difficulties in doing so because she was barely able to see through her anger. George tiptoed in a painstakeningly slow manner up behind her, sensitive to the choleric heat radiating off of her in fiery waves. He winced as he heard the sound of her finally being able to close up her chest all of the way.

"Sandy, will you, _please_, listen to me?" He ventured to try and draw her into a sensible conversation, but he was literally frightened into silence as she whirled on him, expression crazy and her make-up streaming in black tears down her cheeks.

"I don't even want to hear it, George!" She yelled right in his face, suddenly dropping down to her hand-and-knees to do something she and Hermione called a "Dummy Check" – a Muggle word for rechecking a room for stuff that one may have forgotten to pack up. George stepped back to give her room, but continued to press, desperate to get her to speak to him rationally so that he could his explain his side of the situation.

"Sandy, I promise you... What you saw in there was not what you think –" He was cut off once again when she abruptly stood up straight, almost bumping him under the jaw with the top of her head. He gulped when he realized she had her tremendously lengthy wand in her hand now, apparently having been retrieved from under her own cot where she must've accidentally discarded it after flinging the pillow at him.

"Oh, and I suppose you two were just _chatting_, hmm? Have a nice, long talk with her tits and tongue? Pip, pip, and whot, whot!" She was absolutely livid by now. She gave him the ugliest face he'd ever seen her bestow on someone before she readjusted her wand in her grasp and swish-and-flicked to enchant her suitcase into levitating up above the beds. George could barely avoid being bowled over as she ferociously side-stepped him to get out into the corridor. Panicking, he reached out and clutched at the handle of her luggage floating level with his chest.

"Well, yes, we _were, _but then things...kind of got out of control… Sandy, would, PLEASE, not walk away from me!? Let's discuss this!" He paused as she quickly flung herself around to face him once more.

"You want to talk? Okay, let's "talk," then. How would you like to go about it, George? Rolling around on the floor, or up against the wall?" She smiled nastily at him before heading out into the hall at last, narrowly missing a collision with Angelina, who was attempting to beat a hasty retreat. The two women glared at each other in a staring competition, waiting to see who would make the first strike if it came to that kind of dispute.

"…S-Sandy." Angelina finally greeted cautiously, timidly polite, stammering despite her assurance of taller stature. Sandy just narrowed her honey eyes; the pupils blazing as she figuratively scorched the older, dark-skinned witch.

"Enjoy George while you can, _Angelina_." She finally said, spitting out her former housemate's name as she pushed her way past on her way to the stairs. "Feed him twice a day, water him, take him outside every hour or so, make sure he does not hurt himself, and keep him away from the neighbor's bitch!" She added over her shoulder.

Angelina stiffened and was about retort when she was startled out of her wits by Sandy's floating gray trunk as it nudged past her to follow its mistress. George himself came out of his younger sister's room right after, distractedly giving an ounce of attention to Angie momentarily before he turned away.

"Damn it, Sandy, don't _leave_!" He shouted at the said girl's back as he sprinted down the corridor.

Downstairs, the Burrow's other occupants were staring confusedly up at the stairs, wondering what the heck was going on. Mrs. Weasley stood in the middle of her kitchen with her hands at her hips with the pillowcase that had been hurled over the banister clutched in her left fist.

"It sounds like a battle is commencing up there… What in the world do you think they're doing?" Hermione, having been assisting Mrs. Weasley in the dishwashing, whispered into Ronald's ear as he leaned against the wall beside the counter containing the breadbox. He shrugged and shook his head, just as perplexed by the noise as she and everyone else was. It was only when the commotion began to make its way down the steps did he scrunch up his lips and then replied softly to his girlfriend.

"Uh oh, this _really_ does not look good…" He summed the situation up simply by stating-the-obvious as they all watched Sandy storm down the twisted staircase with a buoyant suitcase gliding along the air behind her. She was tailed closely by George, who was practically begging at her heels for her not to go and to hear him out. The odd, mini-train was brought up at the rear by Angelina, appearing to have never taken off her cloak and looking a bit pasty despite the dark hue of her epidermis. Once they all had gotten to the ground floor, Angelina shoved past the first two without even a glance back at George, the person she'd come to the Burrow to see in the first place. She then did a fast-walk to the kitchen door, but hesitated as she was passing by Mrs. Weasley. She gave the plump woman a fake smile and waved a little, too jauntily in a half-hearted farewell.

"Thank-you _so very _much for your hospitality, ma'am. YOU were very kind to me, but I may not be back here for a good, long while. Give Harry and Ginny my best regards and I hope all of you have a merry rest of your lives." She said in an insanely robotic voice as she dipped her head in a final good-bye before rushing out of the door, slamming it behind her. It didn't take long for a muffled _pop!_ to make itself known, indicating that Angelina had Apparated away.

Attention all turned back to George and Sandy still arguing amongst themselves. Sandy was doing her best, it seemed, to make her own way to the kitchen entrance while George was trying his utmost hardest to get her to stay. He clutched and grasped on to anything he could, from the levitating luggage wafting on an air current to Sandy herself. The latter would have none of it, however, struggling vigorously each time George attempted to wrap her up in an embrace.

"Let. Me. GO!!" She screeched at his latest effort to grab on to her, succeeding once again in escaping before turning to face Mrs. Wealsey directly as Angelina had moments before. "I'm sorry Molly – Mrs. Weasley, but I can't stay here. You can ask _George_," She jerked her thumb over her right shoulder at the aforementioned man as he himself raked a shaking hand through his growing red hair, stressed to the fullest extent. "To give you all of the dirty details, but I'm just not up to staying for another second. Thank-you so much for everything and tell Harry and Ginny, wherever they are, that I love them." She paused here as she flicked her gaze over at Hermione and Ron taking cover in a corner and she gave them an apologetic look, but nothing more.

George watched this exchange from afar, glad for the small break, but quickly jumped back into action when Sandy began moving for the door again. He bodily slammed the enchanted trunk aside, nearly sending it crashing into the table, and then placed himself in Cassandra's path; arms outstretched to both sides. He over-looked the flash of scorn zooming over her face and puffed out his chest (and perhaps a little of his ribcage) to feign confidence and maybe an ounce of courage, jutting his chin out to add to the illusion.

"Cassandra Edith Orcal, would you, please, _quit_ striving to get away from me and at least TELL me what you were doing outside of my bedroom in the first place while I was having a private conversation to reconnect with an old friend? Could you find it in your heart to give me _that_?" He inquired loudly so as to be able to talk over her in case she tried to yell out protests. He unintentionally ended up drawing more of an audience as the rest of his family all strolled in from the living room to find out for themselves what the arguing was all about, but George pretended to not care that a semi-circle was now forming around him and Sandy as he glared down at her, chest huffing as he wheezed from over-excursion after weeks of discontinued exercise andkeeping a wary eye on her wand still gripped tightly in her right hand.

Sandy's cheeks glowed such a bright scarlet, a lot of the people in the room now were pretty certain that her head was about to pop off in a spectacular display of blood and guts and had even started shifting in their spots a little to make it to the best hiding place in time, but, instead of that, the falsely-black-haired witch just raised her shivering left hand, the pointer finger jabbing straight at the site between George's blue orbs.

"Oooooh, no! Don't you **DARE**spin this towards me! _I_ wasn't the one discovered practically shagging my former Quidditch teammate while knowing fully well that my 'boyfriend' – forgive me; my idiot-guy-mate-who-I-thought-cared-for-me-the-way-I do-him – was currently boarding in the same house! Don't you _even _try that game, George Gideon Weasley!" She fumed, smoke literally trailing in clouds out of her ears. When George refused to budge, alternately opting to bring his arms in to cross over his chest as a signal of resolve, Sandy just scoffed exasperatedly, rolling her honeyed-pools-of-death. "Fine. _Fine_! You **really** want to know what I was doing outside you're door, George? I heard you and your sporty mistress laughing and giggling your merry ways up the stairs from my niche in Ginny's humble abode and got jealous – yeah, George, _jealous_, don't look at me that way! – anyway, yes, I snuck up to your door and eavesdropped and heard everything you two jawed about. That's right, I listened in, you prat, but it's not like _you_ never did anything that low! I could probably reveal things about you that'll make your poor mum's toe curl! …No offense, Molly, you understand?" She added politely in Mrs. Weasley's direction, while all the older woman could do was stare with her mouth open.

George's eyebrows furrowed. "Sandy… If you were jealous why didn't you tell me so in the first place? Did you really have to take the awesome power of your anger out on my poor door?" He inquired, giving a shallow shrug. Sandy rotated her eyes skyward once more.

"Well, do you blame me, George, after my second knock went ignored?" She sighed, suddenly appearing very tired. "…Look, maybe it was…a _tad_ wrong to kick the piece of timber – sorry, Mr. Weasley – in like that and there were possibly better ways to let you know how I felt, but, as it stands, I really feel uncomfortable here with you right now. So if you'll, please, step aside? I promise I'll apologize to your door some other time." She barely even gave him time to react as she nudged him to his right, catching him off guard and almost tipping him over with her slightly healthier physique. She then grasped on to the doorknob of the kitchen door, pulling it open to get out into the garden at last.

George grew solemn in the face and just sat back to watch as her suitcase followed out on invisible wings. Once both the woman and her floating baggage were several yards away, the door magically closed on it's own with a wave of Sandy's wand from outside, leaving a kitchen full of bewildered people all staring at the lone man standing next to it while he found his bare feet to be more interesting than anything else.

There was a long, awkward silence that stifled the room in something that made the air go warm as they all continued to look to George to give them an explanation. After about three minutes, finally deciding it was time for _someone _to say _something_, Hermione carefully took a step out of her and Ron's secluded corner and opened her mouth to instigate some information to start flowing. She hadn't even said a word when the kitchen door suddenly opened again, just narrowly avoiding hitting George across his upper left arm. Harry walked seconds later, gazing around at everyone almost sternly before his green gaze settled on the aforementioned red-head standing right next to him. George refused to look back at him, his own attention focused steadily on one of his big toes. Harry scowled at this.

"I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what exactly is going on?" He questioned firmly, eyes hard. Before George could reply, Mrs. Weasley, finally having had enough being left in the dark, threw her hands up, tossing the pillowcase in her clutch and leftover soapy water from washing dishes into the air.

"That's what the _bloody hell_ I'd like to know as well!!" She roared, startling everyone into jumping a foot off of the floor, including her husband. She turned a frightful glare upon George, who, amazingly, showed now fear whatsoever as he returned it blankly. Mrs. Weasley, snorting, stomped her way over to her son and got right into his face. "What _was _Miss. Johnson doing up in your room when I specifically remember ordering you to remain down here!? And what is this snogging/shagging business that has poor Cassandra all in a tizzy!? You better start confessing something, George, because I don't think there are enough people in this kitchen that can hold me back from tearing off your other ear!"

George just quietly took the screaming as if it was little more than putting his face near a gentle fan. It wasn't that he was being disrespectful to his mother, of course; he was just too exhausted really to react too much any longer. What with the morning he just had, he suspected he'd probably be joining Fred in an early grave by this very evening…

Mrs. Weasley, once she had run out of steam to yell, sat there heaving for a long while until she realized that George wasn't even answering back to her or elucidating on anything that had just happened. She shot her hands in the air once again and then rounded on Harry, who wisely backed himself up a little against the kitchen door he just came through. He might of needn't bothered, though, as the matron Weasley, as she always seemed to do with someone who was not immediate family, instantly transformed back into the loving, doting parental figure and gave him the warmest smile he'd ever received in his entire life.

He knew then that whatever went on inside the house must have been pretty horrific for Ron's mother to look at him like that.

"Harry, dear, I am so very sorry that this tragically dismal situation is…_cutting_ in on yours and Ginny's special day." She said to him sweetly, her tone having lowered back to its original octave. "There seems to be a bit of a disagreement going on between George and Cassandra, however – a lover's spat, if you will." She added as she gestured with both hands towards George to her left, not paying any mind to the wide-eyed, disgusted glare he gave to her cheek at her obviously fake act.

Harry, surmising that he should probably say something before Mrs. Weasley had to trouble herself with prodding him into admitting what he came in for in the first place, cleared his throat to gain back the 'spotlight.' Once he had everyone's eyes reclaimed on him, poked his thumb at the wood behind him, indicating something on the other side.

"Well, in case anybody is interested – and I suspect you all are – Ginny has Sandy trapped in a conversation to prevent her from leaving, as we caught her marching out into the garden muttering about how she was going murder someone by drop-impalement. They should be coming inside in a few. Now, like I said, I _really _loathe putting myself into harm's way, but for a friend, I'll do it. So, would someone, PLEASE, politely explain to me what is transpiring here?" He directed the query mostly at George, as he had a compulsory sixth sense that told him the older wizard was most likely at the heart of the problem.

George at last came to the end of his rope and he propelled his arms upwards in a hysterical fashion scarily similar to his mother's with a loud grunt that made everyone give another start. He pushed through the crowded kitchen until he got to the table and grasped at the edge of it to brace himself, his shoulders trembling in exasperation.

"Merciful bat shit!" He cursed down at his reflection scowling at him in a nicely cleaned plate that Hermione had set there earlier. "If it's _really _everyone's **bloody **business what I was doing up in my own private quarters, yes, I _was _snogging Angelina! That is right; I said SNOGGING, not SHAGGING! Pardon my disobeying ways, Mum, but it's in my nature and we were in a dire need for someplace _quiet _so that we could _catch up_! I honestly did not bring her up there with the initial intention to get my hand in her knickers, though! She _pounced_ on me! **POUNCED**!! I love the girl, but I did not wish to become her replacement for Fred!" He paused here to turn away from the table while pinching the bridge of his long nose with his right thumb-and-forefinger. Harry wondered if he was the only one who hadn't a clue what George was talking about in his last sentence…

George continued to squeeze the skin between his eyes. "Anyway, long story short, I thoroughly made-out with Angelina. Was in the _throes_ of passion when my mental case of a girlfriend decides to come barging in like she owned the place AND me." He glanced up as he felt the sensation of being closely scrutinized and he frowned the deepest his face would allow him when he saw that everyone had scooted away from the door to reform the semi-circle around him. This disturbed him quite a bit. "Don't all of you look at me that way!" He snarled in a way eerily reminiscent of Sandy. "I know what I did was wrong, but I couldn't help myself. I may be a wizard, but I'm also a _man_! I have needs! And is it really wise to take her side when she practically barged into my personal affairs just because I didn't answer a couple of knocks!? Not the only time the nosy trout has done it, either!" He puffed out his chest again in an attempt to draw back some dignity and pride, but, still being a little on the undernourished side, his rib cage popped out once again as well and it just made him look silly. "And, in all fairness, I happen to think that Angelina is an _excellent _snogger and…" His increasingly riled speech was shorn in half by a well-timed groan and all bodies in the room whipped around to face the door. George suddenly became so white, even his freckles disappeared.

Ginny and Sandy were standing side-by-side in the doorway, the former having been the one who had made the noise, her hand covering her face as if to hide it. She knew the moment she heard her brother saying those condemning words that he was 100% D.E.A.D. She had always truthfully thought that only Ron could put such a gigantic foot in his mouth.

Sandy was glaring unblinkingly in George's direction. Ginny was holding on to her left arm, as the younger girl had just succeeded in convincing her to come back into the Burrow to find George and Harry so that they could all sit down to talk and find path to working this out together. The second they both came though the door, however, they caught on to the tail-end of George's soap-box rally and her breakfast from earlier turned to icebergs in her stomach. When the red-haired man had spotted them, Sandy knew that by the speed he lost all of the color in his face, he, too, figured out he was now a walking, jawing target.

Ginny could barely balance as she tried to keep her grip on Sandy's elbow. She dug her heels into the slippery floor, but her swampers would not let her find a good footing and she was being heartily dragged, helpless to stop the tigress from hunting her pray.

Everyone began to either do their best to assist Ginny in subduing Sandy or attempting to locate the nearest, safest way out of the kitchen for George to escape. George felt like an incorrectly used toy as the people from the second group all tried to grab him at once. They pulled him in several directions, as if wanting on some to degree to dismember him limb-from-limb. In pain from this insanity, he eventually got away from his "protectors" and tried to find his own path to hightail it away from danger, but it only landed him pinned back against the table.

Things were just _not _going his way today.

It didn't take a lot of effort for Sandy to finally get loose, her rage lending her strength that no one was able to squelch. Everything seemed to slow down as she intimidatingly stomped over to George, who tried to stare her down as he had his mother, but he couldn't seem to do it. She definitely was not falling for any Weasley tricks that he might pull on her.

She knew him all too well…

Or she thought she did until she heard the words, "_I think Angelina is an _excellent _snogger._"

Minutes ticked by in which Sandy gradually raised and reared back her white-knuckled fist. Before anyone, including George, could do anything more than flinch in place, she had brought the appendage forward and connected it hard with his left cheek. All in the room simultaneously winced at the sound of an audible _crack! _as it burst and traveled around the room.

George was literally knocked backwards from the force of Sandy's powerful punch. It was only thanks to a well-positioned chair did he not go flying backwards into the living room and land bodily on the coffee table in there. He flopped unceremoniously in the blessed seat and immediately brought up a shaking hand to gingerly lay it on his now sore face, feeling the sting of tears pricking up behind his eyes. He wondered then if he would even care that they would fall in front of his family and friends…and Sandy herself.

Sandy hovered over him with her right side pivoted towards him; her normally honeyed eyes actually flaring yellow. Her lips were no more than a line across her face and she was heaving like George had been not even a few minutes previous. No one in the room dared to move forward to put some distance between the two of them, as they were all deathly afraid of receiving the same hostility.

It was at last Sandy that broke through the stillness as she reached up her right hand again, disregarding the frightened gasps of everyone else as they thought she was going to strike down on poor George a second time. Instead, she gripped her fingers around the chain of the necklace that George had given her just prior to entering the Yule Ball during her fourth year. In one, angry jerk, she ripped the bauble off of her body and tossed it churlishly into the red-haired man's lap. His shock from being slugged instantly transforming into hurt, George brought his gaze up heavily and looked at Sandy with a stare so mournful, it was a surprise that the girl didn't suddenly come to her senses and then break down crying at it, begging for forgiveness.

Sandy just curled her upper lip in a snarl before backing up and glancing around at the others. She stopped twisting her neck and came to rest her eyes on Mrs. Weasley once more. This time, however, there were no pretty words of apology or sorrow. Sandy just hunched her shoulders in a shrug momentarily before dropping them again.

"I think he deserved it." She mumbled simply, emotionlessly, turning around to Ginny and Harry. "I _am_ sorry about mucking up your day, guys. Congratulations and all of that dribble. …I'll be crashing at my folks if anyone needs me." She added, giving George one last, contemptuous expression before scoffing, shaking her head disgustedly, and spinning expertly on the heel of her black Doc Martins to make a grand re-exit through the kitchen door. Upon closing it, Sandy apparently pulled the door too roughly, causing it to slam loudly and the Burrow to shake and groan all the way down to its magically-supported foundations. Whether she did this on purpose or out of infuriation, no one really knew.

Five minutes later, a distinct popping sound was heard and they knew right then that Cassandra was gone, having Apparated out of the backyard.

Everyone slowly let out the deep breaths they had been holding and all gazes whipped back towards George, who was somberly examining the necklace Sandy had flung at him as it rested wormlike in his hand. Its silver chain was snapped in half about four-quarters away from the clasp that people usually used to hook-and-unhook it around their throats. The tiger's eye pendant was still attached, fortunately, but it looked so small and sad just sitting there in his hand. It was almost like if he decided to curl in his digits and squeeze tight enough, he would most assuredly find just an itty-bitty pile of dust when he reopened his fingers.

After what seemed like a decent amount of time, Bill finally grunted as if summing up his feelings about the whole of the morning's events in that one, guttural noise and then, locking arms with his beautiful wife, trudged up the stairs to asses what the damage to George's door was from apparently being kicked in. Minutes slothed by until Mr. Weasley and Charlie went to join them. Percy was the last to leave, but he copied his brothers, sister-in-law, and father by transcending the stairs as well. The muffled impact of another door closing on the second floor signaled that he had just barricaded himself in his own room – most likely to protect himself from anymore arguments that might erupt among the occupants of the crowded house.

It was soon just Mrs. Weasley, Ron, Harry, Ginny, and Hermione left to keep George company as he continued to sit dejectedly in his chair. They all observed his actions cautiously; ready to jump at a moments notice should he come up with the idea to do something crazy of depression.

It must've probably been around eleven o' clock when Mrs. Weasley at last huffed, drawing the attentions of her sons, her daughter, Harry, and Hermione. She only had eyes for George, however, the glower on her face indicating disappointment.

"…Well, 'in all fairness,' George, if what Cassandra said about you and that Angelina was true, then you probably did deserve what you got. I'm not condoning the fact that she walloped you, but you _did _shove yourself into a mighty big pickle this morning with her. I, for one, applaud her candor and, if you weren't over seventeen, I'd force you into leaving that welt on your cheek as punishment, but since you are…" She trailed off, shaking her head as she returned to the sink and the dirty dishes still inside it. The only thing they got out of her from then on was a whole bunch of muttering, tittering, and tutting.

The four youngest witches and wizards all faced back to George with sympathetic frowns. Ron reached out a timid hand and gently patted his brother on his right shoulder, trying to be comforting.

"It'll be aw'right, mate." He said cajolingly. "Sandy's always been a bit of a violent one. She'll come back once she's had the chance to cool off. You'll see." He gave what he thought was a reassuring half-smile as Hermione extended a quivering hand to brush her fingertips against George's quickly-bruising left cheek.

"Do you want me to heal that for –" She didn't even get a second to finish her sentence before George abruptly slapped her arm away and shoved himself to a standing position, startling his friends and siblings into backing up from his general vicinity. Mrs. Weasley paid no mind to the scraping of the chair's feet behind her and carried on with her dish washing as George, Sandy's necklace fisted in his own hand, hurried his way up the steps after the others that had gone before him.

Hermione watched him go with heart-broken eyes, hugging her rejected appendage against her left breast as she and the three next to her stood side-by-side, wondering what do with themselves after the excitement.

* * *

George lay folded up on his right side in Fred's bed, his still littered with wrinkled paperwork and the memory of what had transpired there only that morning was continuing to play vividly over-and-over in his head. He was plagued by the constant reminder of Angelina's lips on his and the haunting image of the crushed expression on Sandy's face when she had caught them together… It made him want to follow the pillow Sandy'd chucked at him earlier's example and sacrificially fly off of the roof of the Burrow. He'd either die from the heart attack on the way down or the inevitable impact with the ground.

He wondered what Fred would think of the entire ordeal. George figured he might have lent a shoulder a cry only after he'd laughed his angel wings right off of his back, then maybe would have followed it up with a smack to the back of his twin's head with the spat question of what the _heck _was he thinking going against their poor tigress like that.

*_Sheesh, even dead, Fred has more honor than I've ever had. …Even in my own _head_, he does…_* The red-haired man thought gloomily as he went on glaring at an unopened jar of Bruise Removal Paste (a healing ointment of his and Fred's invention -- they had to come up with the idea after the testing of their products left them with many dark blemishes and blotches) that was sitting on the nightstand between the two beds. It was innocently mocking him from its unassuming place next to the dusty lamp. George refused to use any on himself, though, agreeing with his mother's words about not magically getting rid of the dark spot welling up under his left eye as a punishment for his awful treatment of Sandy.

It did not matter that she had not exactly handled things perfectly, either. _He _was the one who basically cheated on her. He was the guilty party.

George sighed, filled with hate for himself, and made a furious shove against the mattress beneath him, flipping his body over until he was comfortably nestled on his right side instead. As he listened absent-mindedly to the consistent mumblings of his father and two elder brothers just on the other side of his door, jumping between the subjects of him and the best spell to mend the damage on the wood that was made by Sandy's foot, the depressed, twinless George slipped into a fitful slumber filled with horrifying nightmares of yellow-eyed female tigers digging up his brother's grave while huge, stone walls came to life on their own and tried to chase him down so that they could crumble and collapse on top of him.

* * *

A/N: So, a really nice long chapter for you guys. ^_^

A Couple of Things: I'm sorry if my ability to write for the Harry/Ginny canon is a bit lacking. While I _have_ always supported these two as a couple, I've never written for them before, so if their part in this chapter sounds kind of stupid, that's the reason. :/

And forgive me for Angelina's part, too. I've never written her character, either, so if she sounds OOC, I'm sorry. -_-

Please, Read & Review guys!


	7. July 5th: Bruised Lines

**Bruised Lines**

* * *

July 5th:

"I effing blew it, didn't I? She's _never_ going to come back." He droned out somberly with his head in his hands and staring down at the deep red carpet of the therapist's office. Velveeta Lynch watched him with one of her signature quarter-smiles and her tortoise-shell spectacles dangling off of their chain down the front of her silvery-satin blouse.

"Oh, now you're not sure of that. She might just need some time. If she cares as much as you insist she does, then she'll return once she realizes she can't live without you." She said in an _almost_ sympathetic voice, cocking her head to the right to see if she could find his face again. George saved her the trouble when he sighed and raised his head again, suspending his hands off of his knees when he rested his wrists on them. He purposely ignored her wince at the sight of the ugly, black bruise he still had on the left cheek.

"Jeez, she got you _good_, huh?" She said, her upper half leaning forward a tad and her neck jerking like a bird's as she inspected his wound. She didn't know whether to feel sorry for him or to be respectful that his chick obviously had a brilliant right hook on her. George just quietly brooded with his thoughts over his "girlfriend."

Truthfully, he really wasn't certain about _how_ he felt about Sandy leaving him. After she had caught him with Angelina, slapped him, thrown her broken necklace at him, and stormed back to her parent's, he had been going through his existence in a daze. Once Angelina had moved as she said she would, he honestly felt a sense of relief to have _both _women out of his life for awhile.

But even _he_ couldn't ignore the crumbling feeling his stomach got every time one of his friends or family mentioned Sandy's name in their conversation…

"What do you suggest I do?" He asked, letting his eyes stare blankly at the moving photo of Ms. Lynch's younger self casting her crocodile Patronus. He'd come in that morning with the full intention of giving her a piece of his mind about her bad habit of revealing her patient's identities and issues (a.k.a. whatever made them psycho in the first place) to people who had no right to know. One look of her violet eyes from behind the lenses of her glasses, however, zapped the agitation clear out of his body and all he'd wanted to do was sit on the now-familiar one-armed couch and spill his undernourished guts to her.

Velveeta pursed her red lips to the side and tapped her clipboard with the quill pen.

"Well, if you really want my advice on it… My thinking is that you should do absolutely _nothing_. Just let her be and maybe she'll come back in a month or two. In the mean time, concentrate on getting well again. You still look sicker than a dog." She said as she took the aforementioned pen and scribbled something on the piece of parchment clipped to the clipboard.

George gave her a withering side-glance, wondering acidly why he could never be sure if Ms. Lynch was actually helping him or enjoying the fact that he was stretching a foot across the very line of insanity.

* * *

A/N: Inexcusably short chapter this time. Sorry, guys. :/

I think it has to be one of my favorites, though. To me, everything make sense and the writing feels as if it just flows really well. ^_^ I still love Ms. Lynch, too. I think she's so silly.

As always, enjoy and, please, Read & Review. :)


	8. July 12th: Melody's Most Disturbing Cont

**Melody's Most Disturbing Content**

* * *

July 12th:

"Hey, George. An owl just came by with a letter for you." Ron said as he stopped by his older brother's room that morning, the white, rectangular envelope in one hand and a half-eaten biscuit in the other. George didn't bother to glance from his notes, so busy trying to keep his mind from drifting into thoughts of Sandy that he didn't even halt to think that maybe the message _might_ have been from his wayward girlfriend.

"Thanks. Just put it on the nightstand." He mumbled with a wave of his hand at the small, aforementioned table situated between his and Fred's beds. Ron raised an eyebrow and shook his head bemusedly.

*_Great Merlin, the man is becoming Percy..._* He thought silently as he, instead of depositing George's mail on the nightstand as suggested, strolled over and stood just next to his sibling's crooked knee suspended a bit into the air over the left edge of his mattress. George did not even look up.

Deciding to take it a little bit further, Ron, smirking mischievously to himself, suddenly began whistling a Muggle tune he'd heard Hermione singing to herself only an hour ago as she did her self-appointed chore of helping Mrs. Weasley wash the dishes after breakfast. Ron had not really paid attention to the words, but the melody'd been pretty and catchy and had been stuck in his head ever since he left the kitchen to go fly around on his broomstick a bit. By the time he'd come back after twenty minutes, he was pretty sure that the song was now ingrained into the wrinkles of his brain.

He sarcastically hoped that George was…"enjoying" the constant aria as much as Ron himself had.

George raised his blue eyes up a bit until he was now completely staring in annoyance at his open door across the room, as if _it _was the one making the offending noise now tweeting endlessly into his left ear. His only ear. The ear quickly becoming deaf from the awful carol Ron was repeating over-and-over until George could barely think straight; let alone _hear _straight. He turned a glare up towards his younger brother, which was obviously what the simple git wanted, because he ceased the infernal warbling that he thought of as whistling as soon as he had the attention.

George scowled.

"Is there **something **you want, Ickle Ronnikins, my dear, unpretentious relative?" He asked in a caustic tone, wanting to clearly display his discontent at Ron's apparent immaturity. The puerile wizard gave a lop-sided smirk before raising the antecedent envelope up high enough for George's inspection and waved it around his face.

"Aren't you the least bit curious about this letter, mate? It might be from someone _impooorrrtaaannnt_." He drew out the syllables in the last word in a sing-song voice, flitting the paper container through the still air some more. George did his best to make his expression bored.

"Yeah, well, I've got some '_impooorrrtaaannnt'_ work I have to do, Ron, so if you, please, just put that damn thing – will you stop swishing it in my face!? – put it down on my nightstand here and I'll get to it later." He rolled his eyes that he accompanied with a scoff and attempted to turn back to the bill he had been previously scrutinizing. Things were quiet for a few minutes. So, in fact, George actually thought for a second that Ron had given up on pestering him and had left the room without George even noticing…

A couple of pokes to his left shoulder popped that theory.

"Grr... _WHAT?_" He snarled as he whipped his head back up in Ron's direction, who shrugged, swallowing the rest of his biscuit whole, which coincided with an outstretched arm, buffeting the unpenetrated letter still clasped in his fingers across George's inherently-long nose several times.

"You're not in the least bit c_urious _about what the note inside says?" He asked teasingly, mumbling through a full mouth, swinging the object in question like a pendulum by pinching on to it by a mere corner with his right thumb-and-forefinger. When George just gave him an annoyed widening of the eyes with an exaggerated, "No, not really!" gesture of his hands, Ron at last had to pause and think for a minute. A light bulb clicked on brightly in his cranium and he leered down at his brother once more. "What about the owl?"

George became incredulous. "Why in Merlin's filly underoos would I care one whit about the owl, you tosser?" He inquired with a confused shake of his head. Ron bit his lip in barely-contained excitement, happy that, for once in his life, he was getting the upper hand on one of the twins, who'd always been the master schemers of the family. George saw the movement and narrowed his blue orbs, his indignation at being interrupted from his financial obligations to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes growing to a sizable frustration. "Ron…what is it about the blasted owl that I should be so interested in?" George seethed through his teeth.

Ron couldn't control the mirth in longer. "It was a Great Horned Owl." He finally revealed through a proud grin, as if he felt accomplished for holding out for as long as he had.

George's mind went blank for a moment, not really certain what to make of Ron's rushed answer. Once the lumped clouds lifted from his brain a bit, he mentally began trying to choose between throwing his little brother painfully out on his derriere into the corridor or hexing him into something so unrecognizable, their mother wouldn't let him sleep in the house. He was just rating each possibility on a scale from 1-to-10 to see what would give him the most satisfaction when the last wisp of gray fog slipped away and suddenly Ron's words made sense to him. There was only one person he knew in the entirety of all his acquaintances and friendships that owned _that _kind of owl. A flick of a gaze up at Ronald confirmed his suspicions.

"Sooker?" George's asked in a murmur, slowly looking down at the paperwork still in his lap after Ronald nodded vigorously at him to attest that his guess had been correct. He shook his head after was seemed an age, bewildered by the immense changes his personality had been going through in the past few months. "Cripes, I'm becoming Percy." He muttered under his breath before flinging the sheet over his baseboard and returning his face to give Ron a determined expression. "Alright, then, let's see that letter."

Ron, with all of the enthusiasm of a man reversed to an eleven-year-old boy, gave a tremendous hop and landed with a _wumph! _and creak of old bedsprings as he settled into a nest in the sheets next to George. He handed his elder brother by two annuals the now slightly wrinkled envelope, peeking over George's shoulder as he began ripping at the paper casing to get at the message within.

What tumbled out was a single piece of parchment about 23.4 x 33.1 in length. The handwriting was tiny and in a tight cursive, which made it somewhat hard to see and read. George immediately knew that this was not a note from Sandy, as her penscript tended to be somewhat larger and _her_ cursive leaned to the right and was loopy when she got to letters that dipped below the line, such as **G**'s and **Y**'s. And, by the impressions he could feel against the tips of his fingers on the other side, whoever _did _jot it down was pressing **very **hard with their quill. This most assuredly meant that they must have been pissed at something…or _someone_.

"Sandy did not author this." George filled Ron in on his suspicions as he reached over to his nightstand, yanked open the drawer, and began searching around for his wand in the cluttered, compact chamber (he hesitated when he felt his thumb brush passed the pendant of the tiger's eye necklace that he'd thrown in there out of shame of himself after the aforementioned woman left the Burrow, but he shut his eyes for a minute to get over it before continuing his exploration). Ron's red eyebrows were furrowed and he was frowning deeply at George's back.

"She didn't?" He questioned worriedly as his sibling finally located what he was scuttling about for and heaved himself back up on to his mattress with his wand in hand. Ron cocked his head like a dog would at this sight. "Who do you think wrote it, then, George? And what do you plan on doing with that?" He pointed a stiff finger right at George's fist clutching at his wand like a greedy king would his gold.

George ignored Ron's jawing for the time being and gazed back at the shady note still enfolded in the crotch-area of his Indian Styled legs. He then did a series of tests on the parchment through an assemblage of non-verbal spells to make sure there wasn't anything magically cast on the message that could harm them. Once finished, he did the same thing with the envelope. When he was content that nothing fishy had been done to that, either, he returned to the letter and tapped the tip of his wand on a random H, mumbling another spell.

"_Écriture Engorgio_." He recited in a whisper and, with a brilliant flare of white light, the words on the page ballooned up to twice their normal size. Ron looked on, fascinated, as the once tiny lettering enlarged into something he could actually make out.

When the illumination on the end of George's wand tip at last blew itself out, the two red-heads brought their skulls exceptionally close together (enough for George's left ear to touch against the tip of Ron's right, though neither bothered to pull away from the abnormal contact) and, their blue orbs swiveled as they went from left-to-right, reading the mysterious note.

It did not take long for George to reach the end and, from everything he'd gathered while perusing the short passages, he had, indeed been right about the person who composed the letter being very upset, if not ferociously so. …And if the threats interspersed among the sentences were any indication.

It began to dawn on George that he was pretty sure he knew _exactly _of whom the message was first scribed. At this realization, he gave a side-glance to Ronald, still himself studying the writing on the parchment, his long, Weasley nose almost brushing against the rough, yellowed surface.

"I have the oddest feeling that it was her step-brother." George suddenly stated out-of-the-blue, giving his reply to Ron's earlier question of who he thought the ghostwriter of the memorandum was. Ron made a surprisingly wise choice to forgo the rest of his reading and gave his brother an expression that could only be described as what he would look like if Harry ever did the uncharacteristic and cursed him.

"You mean that cave troll with the studs and spikes all over his clothing that was practically attached to Sandy's hip at…F-Fred's wake…did this?" Ron asked, treading carefully over the words that needed it, but George managed to let him slide and signaled it with a nod of his head at the younger man. Ron sighed, sounding somewhat relieved as he proceeded on. "But…But how do you know?"

George had been expecting to be asked this. "Call it a hunch, but I seriously doubt that even _Sandy _was mad enough at me that she'd send me a note full of idle threats." He said with a slightly nonchalant shrug as he handed the parchment over to Ron so he could finish skimming over the sentences. "Besides, if she honestly _did _want to castrate me personally with her bare hands, she had plenty of time to do so in the space between when she caught me with Angie and when she split, instead of clocking me under the eyeball." He added with a wry smirk as he pointed out a particular text in the missive to show Ron what he meant.

Ron squinted at that circumstantial line for a moment before going on to wrap-up the rest off his reading. When at last he arrived at the end, he shook his head in utter disbelief, depositing the document back into the bowl of George's folded legs as he bestowed a stare on him that spoke of the same emotion.

"Bloody Hell… Do you suppose that lunatic would really do all of these horrible things to you?" He asked in a soft tone that belayed of worry for his brother and of possibly shock at the audacity of someone that they really only knew through a friend would go to the extent of delivering such an offending message. George's shoulders danced up to his ears before slumping down again.

"He might." He said, trying to sound as unperturbed as possible, remembering a few instances when Fred was alive and they were in Hogwarts that a few of the angry victims of their pranks sent them threatening (and, most times, anonymous) letters cautioning the twins to keep one eye open when they slept. None of them ever went anywhere, however, so, after the maybe the first five, George and Fred just simply began to ignore them and refused to open the new ones. Sandy's step-brother, Leeland, did _not_ seem the type of person that would take stuff like the man seeing his youngest step-sister basically cheating on her lying down, though. George gulped secretly at this harrowing thought "If he's as scary as he looked when we first met him, he'd probably do all of this and more. By the time come Christmas, you guys could be lucky to come visit me in St. Mungo's while I'm being force fed my supper in packets of powdery substances that would make the _Puking Pastilles_ appear safe."

Ron winced at the graphic imagery George was creating in his head. "Blimey, George. Did you do something to him to make him want to do your arse in like that?" He inquired suspiciously and most likely reasonably so. George just gave him an exasperated quirk of an eyebrow.

"…No. No, Ron, **of course I didn't**." He said emphatically with a roll of his eyes. He then stopped in mid-rotation and slowly raised his gaze back to the ceiling, dabbing at his chin with a pointer finger as if he'd just came up with an idea of what he might have done to insult Leeland. "Although, besides befriending, somewhat dating, betraying, and breathing the same air as Sandy, the fact that I _exist _might play a crucial role." He added in a wistful voice that could have competed nicely with Luna Loveood's. Ron scowled at this and swatted George heftily on the shoulder, to which George's actually yelped in surprise with a look of abashed hurt at his sibling.

"Ouch! That's _hurt_, Ronnie…" He said in weak astonishment, having clearly not anticipated Ickle Ronnikens to be so strong, and lifted the sleeve of his shirt, as if inspecting his upper arm for any welts or bruises that might have come from his little brother's hand. Ron didn't even bother with apologizing, glaring at George as if he had something especially gross protruding out of his neck.

"You'll live, you crackpot." Ron growled, awing George again with his new willingness to step up and defend whatever intelligence he may have (and it seemed, after years of attempting to prove it, he'd finally shown that he had at least a smidgen and that he used it well). Ron then hacked a bit to free his throat of mucus that had obviously built up in there, shaking George out of his astounded reverie. "So, are you going to be sending him an owl back, then?" He questioned with the simple-mindedness of the aforementioned eleven-year-old child, tapping a fingertip on a corner of the almost forgotten letter still in George's lap.

George was seeing Ron, someone who the twins had always pestered for being just a silly, little boy, in a new light. His mind was stuck back on how hard Ron had smacked his shoulder and it took a good, couple of minutes before the said man's -- that's right, he was now a _man_ -- query reached his left ear and traveled down the ear canal. When the words finally hit George's brain, it felt like a bee sting and he jumped a tad, then blinked and gave Ron a steady stare.

"Hmm…" He sighed a bit tiredly, feeling his body nearly sinking down into the nest his buttocks had formed in his sheets after sitting for so long accompanying the sound. "I think…that writing him back would be like a call-to-arms. He might just fancy my return letter as being my way of answering his cry to wage war and, seeing as he's convinced himself that he's Cassandra's personal bodyguard, actually use that as a liable excuse to come remove my bones from my body the 'old-fashioned' way. In other words, humble sibling, it is probably exactly what he _wants_." George smiled limply at the confused expression Ron was currently sporting on his facial features and then he turned away to contemplate the parchment spread across his bent legs one more time, raking a hand through his hair; the long, ginger-gray strands parting silkily as his digits tunneled within them.

Ron twisted up his lips in thought, the events of the last maybe fifteen minutes circling and being memorized in his head.

"So, what you're gettin' at is…you plan to do absolutely…**nothing**. Is that right?" He asked slowly as if he, Ron Weasley, were speaking to an extremely dim-witted person. George furrowed his eyebrows, but, instead of frowning, gave a smile hinting at professionally concealed, good-natured humor.

"To better preserve my now slightly pathetic existence, yes, but if you'd rather me do it and sign my death wish, I will. Why are you wondering?" He inquired around a chuckle, giving another, slightly taken aback shake of his own head at Ron's odd behavior at his decision. Ron seemed to ponder George's reply very arduously, his said lips pursing this-way-and-that like he was swishing around a mouthwash. He then apparently came to a decision, as he quite abruptly slap-patted both of his bent knees and almost tripped head-over-heels as he jumped a little too quickly off of the bed. He was approximately half-way to the open door to the corridor before George had even thought to stop him, as he had already been a bit silenced from Ron's sudden leap from the mattress.

"Hey, where're you off to?" He called; honestly disappointed that his younger brother was giving the impression that he wanted to get away from the room (and _him_) as fast as possible. He had not noticed, or truly cared to realize, that it had been rather lonely in the room until Ron had come in bearing the letter. …And George was unexpectedly not so keen on being by himself again. It did not help that he'd actually been having _fun _conversing with Ronald about the mysteries of his puzzling letter.

Ron halted and literally spun around on the balls of his feet like a Muggle ice skater to face George once more, shrugging heavily as if a boulder were sitting atop his shoulders and spine.

"I'm going to let Harry, Hermione, and Ginny in on it. So's they know not to take anymore envelopes from Sooker, in case that prat of a step-brother of Sandy's gets it in his head to do something stupid like that…" He trailed, giving a half-smile when George's face speedily crumpled, wordlessly pleading for Ron not to go through with that idea. The ridiculousness of the pitiful look made Ron chuckle. "Come on, mate. You know I just can't leave Harry out of the loop, and the girls would _kill _me if they don't find out about it from me…and what with Hermione being my **girlfriend **and all..." His eyes gained a queer, little twinkle in the pupils at this last part. "Besides, wouldn't you like having at least a _few _people to be watchin' out for ya and burning any new letters?" He queried through his teeth, beaming a tad, too joyfully for George's comfort.

Although George had to seriously bite his tongue so as not to snarl at the **G**-word, he _did _alsohave to admit to himself that Ron was right. He really did not want their mother finding out about the threatening note, but it would not be easily kept a secret from her if it were only George and the youngest male in the family keeping an eye out for the Great Horned Owl. No, the wisest choice would be to go with Ron's idea.

Geez, did it ever feel unnatural to even _consider _thinking that…

George found Ron's eyes again with his, giving a small, grateful grin and an equally appreciative nod. "…Okay. Just tell them to toss out the ones that have no clear sender, but if Sandy _does_ decide to owl post me, be sure to have your troops hand the missives to me. Deal?" He held out a hand for Ron to shake, waiting patiently should the latter suddenly come with a better solution to their dilemma.

Ron, however, just chortled so deeply in his chest that it became more of a rumble and stepped forward to grasp on to George's outstretched hand with a clap, their respective appendages pumping up-and-down to seal the agreement between them.

"No problem, you bugger." He said around his laugh as he dropped George's hand and turned to leave once more with a shake of his head, but, for the second time, he paused just as he was outlined in the doorframe. One step and he'd be out in the corridor; instead, he peeked back over his shoulder at his older brother still sitting cross-legged amidst his paperwork and bunched sheets. Ron blinked at the sight, his blue eyes twitching as he examined George from afar.

George began fidgeting under the scrutiny he just realized he was being subjected to and he had to peer across the distance of his room to see Ron's orbs surveying him like the last cookie in the jar. George quirked his eyebrow in question.

"What?" He inquired a bit shyly, starting to feel kind of self-conscious and awkward beneath Ron's stare, which made him get even antsier since he was usually the type of person who _never _got bashful unless it was around women he was truly interested in… He really wished he could kick all of the images of Sandy that one thought brought up out of his brain.

Ron just smirked at George good-naturedly, raising a pointer finger at him and moving it around in a circular motion.

"Your bruise…" He said candidly and trailed off; causing George to cock is head in slight suspicion.

"…Yes? What about it?" He responded carefully as if gearing himself up to be teased at by Ron for getting slugged by a woman. One who happened to be (or perhaps by now the correct word would be "**was**") his own girlfriend, nonetheless. George had to concur with himself that it was probably long overdue at this time.

Ron's expression just softened, though, easing George's mind a little as he said: "Nothing. It's clearing up, is all."

George's heart almost exploded with the abrupt brotherly affection he felt at that one, small observation on his sibling's part. It seemed as if all of the time the nitwit had spent around Hermione over the years had actually done him some good after all.

"Thanks, Ron." George said with even more gratitude than before, his smile returning. Ron only nodded, waved, and finally stepped out of the door into the hallway, tossing back a, "Later!" as his footsteps echoed after him on what sounded like the stairs going up to the third level of the Burrow above. George watched the empty space where Ron had been long after he'd slammed the door to his own bedroom just below the attic on the fifth floor.

When it became increasingly obvious that his youngest, male kin wasn't going to suddenly pop back in to say a bright hello, he sighed and glanced down once more at the letter still fanned out over his lap. The words were staring back at him darkly, mocking him as that untouched container of Bruise Removal Paste had maybe a little over a week ago. The pink-and-purple pot of ointment had yet to even be removed from its spot beside the undusted lamp on the nightstand.

Following another few seconds in whence George was thinking hard about what exactly to do with Leeland's message so that no one else in his family (his father, Percy, Bill, Charlie, Fleur – or worse, his _mother_) would find it, he at last grunted and got up from his position on the mattress; his bones creaking in protest from not having been stimulated for such an extended period. Groaning a little at his sore muscles and joints griping at _him_, George walked around the end of his bed to get to the window situated just above the aforementioned nightstand on the other side and squeezed in between Fred's old pallet next to it. He had to stretch up on his tiptoes, despite being a pretty tall guy, to unlatch the hook to open it. He pushed the glass pane outwards to let in the open hair, his ever-extending hair rippling in the slight breeze against his left ear.

After George had had enough of just standing there like an idiot gazing out on what he could see of the sky and trees outside, he rocked back on his heels until they thumped on his floorboards and turned to his right to retrieve the discarded letter, the envelope it came in, and his forgotten wand. He elongated his body so that he could reach the window again, arching his spine and sucking in his stomach to avoid the tip of the lamp. Shifting to be able to get as comfortable as best he could, he then brought out his right hand with the mail he'd received from Sooker fisted in it. They, too, fluttered in the airflow blowing around the Burrow, the papers slapping against each other softly.

George heaved in a deep breath before uncurling his fingers and letting the documents gently fly out from his hand. They swooped and dipped around one another like strange birds, falling ever so closer to the ground. George, still hanging his head out of his porthole, then drew his left hand clutching on to his wand from inside and pointed it at the rapidly descending "pieces of trash." Once he made sure that no one was down on the lawn outside to catch him doing this, he closed his right eye to aim better and recited the spell that came to mind.

"_Incendio!_"

* * *

A/N: Yay! Another update! And it's longer this time! DOUBLE YAY!! ^_^

I have to say, this chapter actually turned out pretty well. I don't like it's flow as much as the last chapter's, but it's got a quality of its own that I love. I'm proud of the way I made George's dialogue, as I've been having trouble tapping into the comedian side of him a bit, but I think in here I managed and Ron has a little more spine to him after all he went through with his friends just like I wanted. :) The only problems I had with this ch. is the title. This document went through at least four title changes before I settled with this one and I'm _still_ not sure if I'm happy with the one I ended up with... And also the ending is kind of...meh. I think I may have rushed it a little, too much, but, otherwise, it was fun writing. :)

Things to Note: The basis of this chapter is the stronger brotherly bond between George and Ron and how they have gotten closer since after the war and what happened to Fred. I wanted to give George good reasoning to hire Ron later on to help him run WWW when he reopens the shop, like J.K. and canon says happens. :3

And if anybody is wondering who Sooker really is, he is Sandy's family owl (a Great Horned Owl, to be exact...). In my Alternate Universe, he's the one who went with her to Hogwarts during her time there. You'll hear more about him in later chapters. :P

Okay, done.

Please, Read and Review! I love it when you guys do! :D


	9. 9:00 on July 23rd: Constellation Consens

**Constellation Consensus**

* * *

9:00 p.m. on July 23rd:

She laid on her back on the roof of her house in Leicester; straight as a pencil with her arms folded behind her head and left leg bent up at the knee while the other remained flatly perpendicular next to it. Sooker, her Great Horned Owl, was perched near the right side of her head, his own buried under his wing in sleep and one of his dangerously clawed feet was pinning some of her midnight hair under the frightening talons. She didn't mind it, though. She usually never did whereas Sooker was concerned.

Her honey eyes gazed up at the lonely sky just finishing turning out its stars for tonight. It had been around 8:30, as supper with her family was drawing to a close, when she had the sudden idea to come up here and stargaze at the _real_ stars, instead of the fake, Muggle, plastic ones that glowed in the dark on her ceiling in her childhood bedroom. So, after retrieving Sooker from his cage on the upstairs landing, she went to the balcony outside of her parents bedroom (she could have Apparated, yes, but the old-fashioned way was sometimes more fun) and used the somewhat splintery lean-to that her mother, Elasia Orcal, used to let the pretty wisteria and sweet pea vines grow on to help her up to the tippy-top of her house.

It had always been a favorite pastime of hers, to clamber up here to think and be alone. It hadn't mattered if it was early morning, late afternoon, or night, as it was now, if she had something heavy on her mind, this was her first place to go -- the stargazing just happened to be a bonus at this time.

How cold or warm the weather wasn't any obstacle, either, for she could've dressed properly for whichever. It was very late July right now, so, basically, it was a month for shorts and Capri's (which she preferred… Cassandra was never someone who liked her legs much, no matter what _anyone _told her).

Ascending to the roof gave her the opportunity to do something else with the stars as well. A game she had made up herself when she was a little girl. The gist of it was simple: all she had to do was try to locate the current constellations in the sky and see if she could remember the names of each one she found without repeating the ones she had already recovered. And right now, she, ironically, had just pinpointed the Draco, long and spindly as it was, and was pretending to shoot imaginary arrows at it. If Voodoo wasn't such a dark magic, she could only wish that the actual Draco Malfoy was perhaps somewhere in his old and cold manor feeling the sting of some invisible wasp biting his arse. The vision gave Sandy a fit of giggles that startled Sooker into wakefulness, to which he ruffled his feathers indignantly and dug his head under the other wing farthest away from his mistress.

Sandy, feeling guilty that she'd just disturbed her companion, sucked her lips into her mouth to quiet herself and went back to staring contentedly at the dark, celestial atmosphere above her. There was the Scorpius constellation. The Corona Borealis. Big, bad Hercules… Oh, and the Triangulum Australe. Professor Sinistra would have been proud of her.

As she continued to lists the names to herself, a subconscious part of her mind began to wander unbiddenly to unrelated things. Did she remember to remove the trash from the waste bin, as her mother had asked of her after they'd all eaten? She hoped Belinda was okay out partying with her present boy toy (pfft! She calls _that_ guy a boyfriend?) and she had to remind herself to hex Leeland for snooping around her room and going through her diary (hey, she wasn't beyond doing girly stuff like writing her pathetic feelings down on parchment…) earlier for Merlin (or God, for that matter) knows what for. Sometimes her step-brother could be such a snot-nosed, little kid.

She was just coming across the constellation Serpens when her thoughts turned a few degrees into wonderings of how things were in the Wizarding World. How primordial plans were coming along for Harry and Ginny's wedding. If Hermione was regretting her decision to forgo reentering school to complete her seventh year, yet. Whether George had driven anyone else crazy at the Burrow by now…

This last question, of course, got her into thinking about George Weasley and the upsetting events that have surrounded him over the past couple of months and she couldn't help assuming that she probably contemplated on him purposely. After all, despite the glaring fact that Sandy had caught him snogging Angelina quite heavily, George _was _still her boyfriend. When she had stormed out of the Burrow on the 26th of June, she had not exactly ended things fair-and-square with him and had not realized it until hours later after her step-father, Judd, had already assisted her up the stairs with her trunk into her third-level bedroom -- he liked doing kind things for her like that, even though the both of them had magic and could levitate the damn suitcase. He was just an awesome man like that.

Cassandra sighed at herself. Her brain had gone off on a tangent again, as it was always prone to do. It was more under controll now that she was older, but when she was younger, the drifting spells had been a whole lot worse and had affected her performace in primary school (to say nothing of the irrepressible bursts of her undiscovered magical energy) before she'd gotten her letter from Hogwarts. Her mother had once come to the conclusion that Sandy had the Muggle mental disorder of ADD/ADHD, but Sandy herself honestly just considered her perpetual inclination to get distracted as a part of her charm. And once she'd begun classes at the castle, it had actually helped when traversing between spending time with all of her friends there and none of them had minded her roaming personality (especially Luna Lovegood, who was laden with a similar quirk, but had a way of being more whimsical and childlike about it than Sandy ever was).

Man, did she ever miss the place.

Her tendency to be an aimless bint was what probably benefitted her in being able to befriend the Weasley twins, who were considered to be over-the-top loony; what with the incredible stunts they ceaselessly pulled. Fred had been the craziest, no doubt about that one, and he'd taken a lot more risks then George did. It was Fred's barmy disposition that had somewhat turned Sandy off, as she kind of leaned towards the idea that she and Fred were too much the same. Being around him was like having another step-brother and she did not need anymore of those (plus, Leeland would've gotten jealous, strange git as he himself was). She'd loved him as a close friend, however, and some of her best memories had included him and his identical brother.

George, however, had not been the one Sandy had initially fallen for. It, with some amusement, had been Harry, who she had met along with Hagrid for the first time in Diagon Alley when she had gone with her parents to get her school supplies. He had been so sweet and courteous then – of course, he still kind of _is _– she just pitched head-over-heels for him right off (she really could not believe someone as noble as he was "raised" by such deplorable Muggles as the Dursleys. She was thankful they all never got meet each other, 'cause Sandy would have had some colorful words ready for the bastards). She'd been ecstatic to get into Gryffindor with him and her crush had continued for four, long years, which had included some competition when Ginny came in the year nineteen-ninety-two.

When Harry had developed his own infatuation for Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, and kissed her during their fifth year together, Sandy had snapped then, too, and cracked Harry across the cheek when she'd found out (she seemed to have a penchant for slapping men who angered and hurt her deeply…). She couldn't stay mad at him for long, though. Her five-year friendship with him and all of the insane shit they'd been through together up till then (plus, Fred had cornered her and had forced her into a heart-to-heart) would not warrant that, so, instead she gave up pursuing him as a love interest and they'd become closer companions as a result.

She truly was very happy for him and Ginny now, as the two of them were so perfect for one another.

This was where George _really_ came in.

***Flashback***

_In the months following her subsequent abandonment of seeking Harry romantically, she spent much of her time in the company of her favorite twins, as they were the only people at that point who_ actually_ knew what to do to cheer her up. She'd devoted a peculiar amount more to George than Fred, now that she thought about it, although back then she had no idea why or that she was even doing it. She'd just done it because it was habit. The two of them had always been the best of mates since they'd met in that niche and she had spared them a few more days from getting into trouble with Filch and McGonagall in her first year. She'd ended up in detention with the both of them for levitating the caretaker to the ceiling, cleaning a sixth floor bathroom that had not seen a bleach cleanser in years and she had plenty of time to get to know them then. _

_They, of course, were the first ones to originally give her the moniker of "Sandy" and the nickname had stuck like glue and it was soon that everyone began to call her that, including the rest of the Golden Quartet_ (a label that a few teachers, namely Dumbledore, had bestowed upon her, Harry, Ron, and Hermione) _and even her own family – except for her step-father who had his own sobriquet for her; a shortened version of her middle name, Edith, or "Edie," after her maternal grandmother. Judd practically christened her with this appellation when she was a little girl and he told her that, despite having something new to address her by, she would always be his little Edie._

***End of Flashback***

Present-day Cassandra sighed again exasperatedly as she tried to recall her brain back from another bout of digression and, as she shifted against the grainy shingles of her roof, attempted to remember what it was she'd been thinking about before going off on the byname interlude. What had it been…?

Oh, right: George.

***Flashback***

_She reminisced about the moment he'd asked her to the Yule Ball in her fourth year. That had been when the Triwizard Tournament was being held had Hogwarts and the school was over-crowded with not just students from the castle, but from fellow establishments __Beauxbatons__ and Durmstrang as well. Sandy had already been in a bad mood from the lack of space and oxygen that was also brought about by the over-loading of extra pupils in the hallways and dorms, even in a place as big as Hogwarts, but she had been mad at Harry then, too, because that was around the exact period when she had found out about his carrying a torch for Cho. She was still speaking to him, of course, but she and Ron had just reconciled with Harry from being angry with him for thinking he'd deposited his name in the Goblet of Fire. They'd seen the errors of their ways following the first task_ (taking on a dirty, great Hungarian Horntail dragon, by jiminy!) _and had quickly made-up with their bespeckled friend to hurriedly lend their support to him. She refused to grant poor Harry a reprieve from the cold shoulder, however, after he refused to notice all of the I-like-you-more-than-as-a-chum hints she'd thrown out over the years._

_So, too upset t__o really want to go to the dance, she had filled up her empty slots with additional, private Animagus lessons from McGonagall_ (something she'd taken an interest in at the end of the year before after she had aided Harry and Hermione in freeing Sirius Black and Buckbeak the Hippogriff), _which she'd asked for at the beginning of the year and had surprisingly been allowed to do and was taken under her Head of House's wing. It was around then George had started acting strangely towards her. He would come up to her in the most random places in the corridors and sputter at her for ten seconds before giving up what he was trying to say and then would book it at top speed, leaving her confused and worried for his sanity. She'd honestly often wondered if testing oto many of his and Fred's own products had finally gone to his head and messed up a vital function in there._

_It was finally on a day when she had just been leaving one of her clandestine tutoring sessions with McGonagall when George was quite literally shoved into her by his own twin brother and their other best mate, Lee Jordan, who'd both gone running after they'd launched George; laughing it up the entire way until they disappeared around a distant corner. It took the bashful George nearly all of five minutes for him to at last get the courage to invite her to the Yule Ball – though, the way he kept staring down at his shuffling feet, you would've thought he should have _them. _It had dawned on Sandy that this was why he'd been so skittish whenever she'd entered his presence or vice versa and she very nearly went brain-dead at the shock it gave her_. _She had truly thought that her red-headed boys only thought of her as a little sister or even as another guy and had sincerely not minded that, but this new development taught her otherwise. The sweetness of it melted the icy wall of her frustration at Harry and, before she really had mulled over her reply, she found herself consenting to attend with him, much to his obvious relief._

***End of Flashback***

Au courant Sandy laughed up at the stars still blinking down at her from the heavens on top of her house as she remembered the peppy skip that had been in George's walk as he'd strolled away from her that morning.

***Flashback***

_In the hours leading up to the festivities, Sandy and Hermione_ (who'd agreed to go with Viktor Crum, Seeker for the Bulgarian Quidditch Team and a student at Durmstrang) _had been manic, doing their hardest to service each other in getting ready while all the while going mental over their own hair, dresses, and make-up. Hermione had finished up first and, with Sandy's permission, ran on ahead. Sandy herself had taken her time; her stomach doing acrobatic stunts she'd never known it to be capable of. She'd purposely strode slowly on her way to the Entrance Hall where she knew George was waiting, silently panicking when she still got there earlier than she felt was necessary._

_Her innards at last halted their circus show inside of her body when she'd caught sight of George at the bottom of the Grand Staircase. He cleaned up nicely when he put his mind to it and he appeared especially dapper with his then shoulder-length hair pulled back into a low ponytail. When he'd finally spotted her as well, the cannons started up in her tummy again, but she'd steeled herself to smile and come down the steps for him. That was the night he had given her the tiger's eye necklace. "As a t-thank-you of s-sorts. Y-you know, for s-suffering through this with me?" He'd stuttered, just as edgy as she was. This had relaxed her a bit to know that it was as awkward for him as it was for her, but once the two of them had gone in there, they gently came to the realization that they did not have to suddenly begin dating once everything was over with. At the time, they were only there as friends and they needed to act as such. So, she'd cracked joke to break the ice and, quickly getting the picture, he'd followed up with a retort and soon things were back to as normal as they could be between them. And they had not even batted their eyelashes when they were forced to huddled together under George's cloak when they gone up to the freezing roof with Fred and Angelina, his own "date," to watch the stars as Sandy now was almost four years later_ (damn, she was beginning to feel old just thinking how much time had passed since then…).

_It became a completely different story when George again asked if he could be her escort to Bill and Fleur's wedding ceremony. Things between them had begun changing ever since the twins escaped Umbridge's tyranny by flying right out of Hogwarts on their Cleansweep 5's. Following their epic departure, Sandy had begun to slip into a mild depression at their absence, something Harry, Ron, and Hermione could not seem to help her through. She became low enough to even write to the twins at their newly-opened joke shop_ (they'd moved out of the Burrow before the end of Sandy's fifth year) _and inquired if she could sleep in their old bedroom, so that maybe it could alleviate her pain a bit. They gave her authorization and she moved immediately in._

_She'd slept mostly in George's bed. She didn't exactly know why, but, for some reason, she just felt more comfortable in it. It had his smell on it_ (Ceder from his broom, smoke from all of the explosions they've had in there, some kind of maplely scent, and sunflowers... She wasn't even sure if sunflowers _had_ a fragrance, but if they did, they smelt pretty, damn good!) _and he must've done something to it to make it fluffier. Whatever the excuse was, every time she got ready to sleep at the Burrow, she always curled under _**those**_covers; never failing to fall into slumber to the thought that George had once lain there, too…_

_It was the way he'd held her when the Death Eaters attacked and set fire to the Burrow, as if trying to protect her smaller frame with his taller, more fit one from the threat of falling timbers before the Order members and his parents put out the flames with the Augimenti spell and how sincere he'd sounded when he told her she looked gorgeous at Dumbledore's funeral, despite the rivers of black mascara pouring down her cheeks that made her realize how her feelings for George had changed from that of just companionship to something much more_.

_She'd been horrified to see him on the Weasley's couch all bloodied from losing his right ear _(stupid, slimy Professor Snape…). _He'd looked so pitiful and frail and he'd been so still, she'd honestly thought that maybe he had left her for good this time…that she had lost him and she did not stop herself from kneeling at his side to hold and kiss his hand. It at first made her angry when he finally spoke up and opened his eyes, calling himself, "Holy_ (Holey)" _and "Saintlike" to Fred, who rightly called George's horrible joke pathetic. Sandy thought and had actually cared for a moment that his near-brush with death had scared the living shit out of her, but when he had turned his big, blue orbs on her and simply greeting her caringly, she'd launched herself into the crook-of-his-neck, not giving a whit about the puddle of red liquid she was probably adding to with her tears._

_She was exceptionally proud of herself when she had kept herself together and had not melted into a plashet of goo when he'd asked her to accompany him to the wedding._

_Of course, her resolute dignity did not protect her from the electric sparkage that popped up every time she and George touched skin-to-skin. She had not been afraid to admit to herself that all she had wanted to do was jump on him and snog the hell outta him; never mind the fact that there'd been hordes of others around, including the members of his family,_ Fleur's _family, their mutual friends, and Fred, who'd have never let the two of them hear the end of it with all of the jokes he would've come up with from seeing a show like that. It had only been the intrusions of Kingsley's lynx Patronus and Hermione materializing out-of-the-blue to grab her away so as to drag her to Harry and Ron to go on the Horcrux mission Dumbledore had assigned the Quartet that had kept her from seriously doing it._

***End of Flashback***

Damn the both of them. Well, perhaps not so much Hermione, for Sandy loved the girl like a sister, but Kingsley? …Yeah, damn him a hundred times over.

***Flashback***

_Having to go without_ _either_ _of the twins beside her to crack jokes to cheer her out of the funk of weary traveling was merely unbearable for Sandy, but the fact that she had to live with missing George the most out of the two of them was absolute torture. Though she kept a straight face and an ironclad loyalty to follow Harry wherever he went as a good friend should to hold her together, at night she was bound to succumb to dreams of simpler times and thoughts of perhaps creating something special with her red-haired, blue-eyed man when she returned to him and if the both of them survived the ordeals of the war… It was all the worse in the mornings when she would wake and expect to find him there laying close by her, as in her nightly visions, only to have cruel reality set in and kick her in the face._

_And it all went up shit creek when she messed up sneaking into the Ministry of Magic with the other three. She was caught as they were trying to escape and her Polyjuice Potion had worn off_ (she'd enchanted her wand and Dumbledore's Sneakoscope to return to Harry so that they would not be taken in the process as well). _They immediately brought her underground and she was passed to high-ranking Death Eater after high-ranking Death Eater as they tried to interrogate her about Harry's whereabouts. She was able to fool them most of the time. They did not even know her real name for awhile_ (she'd gave them a fake one and had vehemently stuck by it, not matter how many times they tried to get answers out of her; at times even beating her), _until she ended up at Malfoy Manor and was outed by Draco's blonde arse…_though, she had to admit, he had seemed reluctant to do so.

_To her horror, she caught on Lucias Malfoy's ideas to use the Cruciatus or Imperius Curse to coerce her into admitting where Harry was. So, panicking, she instinctively transformed into her tigress alter-ego and succeeded in making a mess of the manor's parlor, but Bellatrix Lestrange_ (the psycho bitch) _hit Sandy with an Imperius spell that made her warp back into a mere slip of a girl. The animal part of Sandy lent strength to her already resilient will, however, and, with determination and a hell of a lot of pain, she just barely managed to keep her trap shut against the magic's power. When they realized they would get nothing out of her for the time being, they threw her in the basement with several other prisoners_ (including Dean Thomas and Luna Lovegood), _hoping the her tenure down there would weaken her into confessing at last._

_The only thing that was able to get her through that terrifying nightmare was the thought of getting the chance to see George one, last time._

_While not exactly happy that they were captured, too, Sandy_ was _thankful to see Harry and Ron again when they were tossed down and was ready for a fight to save Hermione from the same, brutal torture that she herself went through. The Quartet and the other hostages were barely able to make it out alive as they fled to Shell Cottage with the assistance of Dobby the House Elf _(who was sadly slain in his heroic efforts…).

_When they finally made it to the Room of Requirement through the Hog's Head Pub owned by Aberforth Dumbledore _(crotchety, old fool, he was. Sandy, though she was grateful to the tavern keeper for his help, decided the moment the man spoke that she definitely preferred his brother, Albus – but, of course, she kept that hush, hush) _a few weeks later on the night of May 1__st_,_ she at last came face-to-face with her twins _(and Ginny_) for the first time in so many months. Her metal steadfastness quickly crumpled and dissolved as she launched herself at the both of them and embraced them as if she'd never release. She had to pay a least a little attention to herself, though, to make sure she included Fred in the hug and not give all of her attention to George; surprisingly, Fred seemed to telepathically get her need to be with his brother, so he slipped away unnoticed to let them have their moment. Merlin bless his soul..._

_Sometimes she thought maybe she should have paid more attention to Fred in that Room. She knew it might have not changed anything, but at least she would have gotten more out of seeing him alive-and-well before running into him and Percy in the throes of combat in the body-strewn corridors and that damn wall…_

_She did not know what possessed her to double back through the chaos for Fred's body. Everything became a blur after she'd transformed once again into the tigress to protect the still form of Lavender Brown from becoming Fenrir Grayback's next snack and had allowed Harry, Ron, and Hermione go on without her under the Invisibility Cloak. She'd managed to hold her own against the insane wallops of hubcap-sized werewolf paws, but Grayback was definitely the more experienced fighter in animalistic combat. He would have had Sandy killed right then-and-there with a finely aimed swipe of his claws across her throat had it not been for Professor Trelawney dropping a crystal ball on him, knocking the beast out cold._

_After dragging Lavender's still unmoving frame behind a tapestry where it would be safe, Cassandra came out glancing from side-to-side, trying to decide whether to let her tiger or human instincts take control. The tiger's quickly won out and she began to stroll right back down the hallway she and the others had just sprinted from. Most steered clear of her, as not a lot of people were willing to take on a adult tigress who appeared to be on a mission – not even burly, bull-shaped Death Eaters equipped with wands wanted to tussle with her, although a few looked like they were playing with the idea in their heads before realizing how utterly stupid it would be._

_When she had relocated the body in the niche Harry and Percy had laid it in,, she just stared down at him for a moment, gulping every, few seconds to hold back the very human reflex to throw up. Poor, poor Fred was bloodied and dirty, limbs broken from the castle stones collapsing on him and his face contorted in a final laugh that made it even more grotesque and morbid. Cassandra-tigress did her best to resist the urge to find a different corner to puke from the heavy reality of it all and stretched her neck out to bite down on the back of Fred's shirt collar to begin dragging his limp figure like a deer carcass back to the Great Hall where she hoped his family might be._

_She ran into Percy when he nearly collided with her as he was chasing down another Death Eater _(whether it was the same one – Rookwood, she guessed -- who'd made the wall fall atop of Fred, Sandy was not sure). _He was initially a little shocked at the sight of her, as he'd never seen Sandy as a tiger before; did not even know she had been training to be an Animagus. Plus, to see a potentially dangerous wild animal such as a big cat _(that did not belong in Britian)_ with the deceased corpse of his dead brother in between its teeth was probably a tad nerve-wracking for him, too. Sandy had to deposit Fred back on the floor and return to her normal self to explain to Percy in hurried detail that she wanted to get Fred safely to the Great Hall and would most likely need the former Prefect/Head Boy's help. Obviously still riding the wave of anger of having one of his siblings taken before his very eyes, Percy quickly collected himself again and silently agreed to lend a hand. With the cooperation of a another student that Percy recruited before the bloke could sprint passed on his way to hex the oblivion out of an unknown Voldemort minion, the two of them were able to heft Fred on to Sandy's strong spine after she retransformed._

_They were lucky enough to only have to wade through _some _of the pandemonium that was scattered about the hallways-turned-battlefields when Voldemort suddenly called off the Death Eaters an hour before midnight, insisting that the fighting would recommence afterwards unless they turned over Harry. The only thing Sandy could think of as she padded down the Grand Staircase with the burden of Fred's weight on her shoulders and Percy limping beside her was how much of an asshole Voldemort really was. Sympathy for Harry had welled up in her then, realizing just at that moment what a hell his life had always been with the lunatic Riddle perpetually on his tail._

_That emotion was quashed when Cassandra-tigress and Percy at last entered the Great Hall and was replaced by heart-break and love for George as she saw him go to his knees beside his already-kneeling mother weeping on the floor. Sandy suddenly hated herself for having the selfish impulse of being the one to bear Fred's remains to them. She felt so guilty as she lowered her striped bulk to the floor to allow Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Percy to relieve her of the 215 pounds that was Fred. When she had morphed back into her true self, she immediately crawled over into George's arms, catching a glimpse of the bodies of Lupin, Tonks, and Shepherd lain out behind him on the way. Abruptly overcome with the sadness at the thought of how many of her loved ones were now dead, Sandy'd just bawled her eyes out into the armpit of George's shirt until she could not anymore. When she came up to wipe at her tears, she saw this _(there was no other way to say it)…heated _look instantly cross over George's face that made her stomach do the swoop thing from nerves. She knew what was coming before their lips even had a chance to start inching towards each other._

_The moment they came together sent currents of electric voltage so high through her veins, she reckoned that she could just become paralyzed from pleasure of it. Truthfully, she did not, and most likely never _would_, know of any other kiss that she'd ever enjoyed so much or found so perfect…_

***End of Flashback***

Sandy lifted her right arm, the appendage relaxed and flexible, stuck out her pointer finger and began to play Connect-the-Dots with the stars clustered above the head of Ophiuchus and just under the metaphorically poisoned stinger of Scorpius' tail tip. She had a couple of hearts, a flower and one, gigantic drawing of a Muggle interpretation of a star in-between about twenty-five little, tiny other ones by the time she got bored with the game and let her arm curl back into its recent position behind her head along with its buddy, Lefty. She gave another sigh, her mind still heavy with pensiveness.

She clearly remembered the day George snapped at her. She honestly could not exactly recall what exactly it was that she'd said to set him off, but she was pretty sure it was something probably as simple as an inquiry to his well-being. She was certain, however, that the reason for his outburst was due to her tearfully revealing that she'd been practically at Fred's side when he was killed and, hence, was how she knew where his body would be when she'd returned it to the Weasleys…

George had seemed at first to accept the ill fact that he was no longer a twin and present Sandy could revoke the feelings of pride she'd had for him for being so go-with-flow. After she had spilled her secret at Shepherd's funeral (a very stupid act indeed, she now decided), though, he'd appeared to lose his confidence and soon began to shed his weight as well. The well-defined tonage he had received from so many years of Quidditch was lost somewhat and his acquiescing attitude obviously went with it.

Following that fateful moment, the two of them tried their best to avoid one another. She'd refused to sit anywhere near him and, instead, sat with the other Quartet members (plus Ginny), which quickly got uncomfortable as the two couples that had formed up between Harry with Ginny and Hermione with Ronald began to make her definitely feel fifth-wheelish. When she at last got annoyed with all of the cuddling commencing on either side of her, she switched her seat yet again and ended up kind of smushed in the middle of Neville Longbottom and Luna (it wasn't _too_ bad, really. At least Luna made her feel at home with the two of them).

Things got worse when George attempted to secret-agent his way passed Sandy family as she was finally reunited with them at Fred's wake (her mother, step-father, and Leeland had come with the reinforcements steered by Charlie Weasley during the second half of fighting at Hogwarts and afterwards had all been in-and-out of St. Mungo's getting treated for their injuries, which explained why they had not come to find Sandy as soon as everything had died down. Belinda took a feigned sick leave from university and showed up the night before the wake). Sandy had simply pointed him out as no more than Fred's twin brother, but she'd so often talked about the boys, especially George, amongst her kin, that when his name accidentally popped out of her mouth, Judd had taken it upon himself to heartily bear-trap the red-haired man by the shoulder to drag him into the group as if he were one of them. Sandy, at that point, had cursed her step-father's naturally amicability.

To her amazement, George was surprisingly polite and courteous to everyone in the group; even Leeland, who looked like he already seriously hated the other male, despite having barely said a word to him. Sandy was pretty sure a conflict would raise its ugly head later on down the road concerning the two of them.

When her family had departed to unknown areas of the funeral home to do whatever it was they did when Sandy was not around them, it left her to stand few widths apart from George alone. They were face-to-face and were impeccably silent, but Cassandra knew what it was he was thinking because she had the very same thoughts on her mind. Their answer came when George walked away first, bringing Sandy to the realization that he'd been faking his generous demeanor towards her relatives so as to not let them on to any animosity between him and their daughter/sister. She had no idea whether to shout out a thank-you at his retreating back or catch up with him only to slap him across the cheek.

And then, of course, there was the funeral eulogy. Dry-scarred hands steadying shaky shoulders. A moment of forgiveness before the _real_ hell started.

Sandy's honey eyes swiveled from side-to-side, making up a strange story in her head about strong, hefty Hercules bounding around the Triangulum Astrale after the Draco constellation, the big brute wanting to grab a hold of the dragon's tail to use him as a living hammer-throw. It made her chest swell up like a helium balloon and her lips suck in on themselves as she tried to hold in her laughter at the funny image the tale brought up. She snorted when the thought of Draco (human counterpart or otherwise) going straight into the sun.

Again, Voodoo magic would come in handy here.

Stupid scatterbrain.

…She was so scared to find George…_that way _on May 31st; his arm all cut to pieces from that razor, looking for the entire world like he'd stepped out of a Muggle horror film. It had been a very surreal experience having to take care of him afterwards. She wasn't even sure of _half_ the stuff she must have done for him, although she was certain it wasn't the best idea to leave him alone with just her grandmother's enchanted, old, stuffed rooster as his bodyguard (that thing had always been a little touched for a inanimate object – constantly swaying and bobbing to an unheard song and making those bulbous eyes clatter around. Though, in spite of its short-comings, Sandy had always been fond of it, if only for the fact that it had belonged to someone very important to her) while he was over-the-moon drunk and sitting in the bathtub. She'd told George that her reason for doing this was to preserve his sense of privacy and to straighten up his trashed flat, but the_ real_ rationale she used to do this was because she couldn't stand be in the same room with his wounded self any longer. The first thing she'd done the moment she'd stepped out of the bathroom was go over to the last, remaining cushion that the Death Eaters had "politely" left on the couch, flop down it, and silently cry into her hands.

Sandy was really not big on crying unless there was a serious cause to and the past, couple of years with Sirius and Dumbledore's deaths, the war, and the funerals following had given plenty of decent excuses for it. Finding George attempting suicide was just icing on the cake…strawberry flavored and red like his blood.

When the both of them had dropped by the Burrow (where the two of them, the rest of the Weasley clan, Harry, and Hermione had all been shacking up in all month) to tell his parents what had happened, Molly's immediate reaction was an insane mixture of hysterical crying over her poor baby's misfortune, insane anger at his stupidity, and an immense relief that Sandy had caught George just in time. Mr. Weasley was, thankfully, a lot calmer, more understanding, and was mostly interested to trying to get to the root of George's problem or _problems_. When no one could not get an answer out of him that would help all of them fathom what exactly his reason for injuring himself was (although everyone agreed that they had a pretty good idea as to why), Hermione suddenly marched up to the plate and suggested that he go to therapy.

Now, Sandy being a Half-Blooded witch, she knew what Hermione meant by the word "therapy," but everyone else besides Harry gave her expressions that clearly wondered if she had finally gone bonkers from all of the reading. It took the young wizard and both of his witch friends to explain explicitly what the _heck_ Hermione was referring to. Once they all got the general idea, they, surprising their impromptu "teachers" in the process, agreed to the novel, if not queer, concept of getting George a therapist. ...Much to George's indignation, as nobody, not even Sandy, bothered to ask his opinion on this plan.

Unfortunately, as Charlie and Bill found out when they went in for information, St. Mungo's did not carry a staff member that dealt with the psyche of a patient – had, of course, never even _heard _of "something like that." Sandy figured as much. Psychology was more of a Muggle notion. "Therapy" and "therapists" were most likely not even part of the wizard dictionary.

So, the entire, extended family having to turn to the Muggle world for assistance, Cassandra and Hermione corralled themselves together (along with a reluctant Ronald) and began there search in other cities around Britain for someone, _anyone_, who was willing to take a special case like George. They kept their eyes and ears open for any coincidental news for perhaps some kind of wizard therapist doing underground work somewhere, but they did their best not to get their hopes up.

They had just arrived in Liverpool when it happened. Sandy had found the dismally gray building first. It looked no different from any of the other nearly identical ones placed on either side of it and all around the square, but, for some, strange reason, she felt highly drawn to it, as if something was calling to her from within. Ron (duh…) and even Hermione had thought she had gone mad when she mentioned her feelings to them, but they followed her inside anyway, desperate and honestly having no prior engagements elsewhere.

The therapist they were sent to by the receptionist in the lobby to see was definitely NOT what they were expecting. She was, delightedly, a witch, but she provided services for both Muggles _and _wizardskind. She was…a bit eccentric for someone of her profession, but, while Sandy silently agreed with Ron and Hermione (by using covert side-glances) that the blonde-haired woman _was_ a bit iffy (by the moving pictures on her desk, the lady had already had three husbands in her lifetime!), she seemed to be the perfect match for George (in a business sense, of course). When the three of them returned to the Burrow on the 5th of June with information regarding the witch therapist's (Ms. Lynch, her name was) credentials and other such gobbledy-gook, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley conceded to hire her on the spot and sent Percy's owl with their own parchment of specifications pertaining to George, the new patient, and money Harry'd lent them to help pay off a years-worth of appointments.

Everyone except Sandy, who hung back for "personal" reasons, nearly jumped out of their seats and attempted to bombard George with questions after he and his parents came back to the Burrow from that very first visit to Ms. Lynch's office. He did not tell them all much, but admitted that he did not mind having to go to therapy as much anymore once he'd met who his shrink would be (as Sandy'd had a gut-feeling would take place) and he also revealed that she'd given him a couple of "assignments" to take care of, preferably before the next session. One was to move back into the Burrow until further notice from Ms. Lynch herself. The other was to not go into work at the joke shop for awhile (George did _not _appear too thrilled about this order). These ultimatums were the only ones divulged, but Sandy instincts told her that there was something that George was holding in by the careful way he discussed Ms. Lynch's instructions for him. And the not-so-secret peeks he kept flicking at her made it seem even fishier. Cassandra could practically smell the tuna…

Days following were spent collaborating to aid George move all of the things he'd need or want back into his old room at the Burrow. Sandy spent much of this time trying to avoid him by aspiring not to be in the Weasley home when he was there or vice versa by not being inside the flat above WWW while he was in the same premises. If that did not work, she would always seek out the company of the others, even with the ones she did not normally talk to on a regular basis, such as Percy and Charlie. Of course, her strategy was not perfect and there were times when she'd unceremoniously bump into him in the tight space dubbed the first floor hallway. These awkward moments were filled by Sandy pressing to make some kind of conversation with him that usually consisted of her being the only one speaking whilst George either grunted or nodded at intervals he deemed appropriate.

After awhile of this dancing around, Hermione and Ginny finally confronted Sandy about it one night in the latter's bedroom when everyone else was asleep and Sandy was not able to escape their interrogations. At first she tried to throw off their pursuing question by simply stating, "I don't know," several times in a row to see if that would grate on their nerves enough to get them to stop asking. Naturally, it was eventually Hermione that wore her down by appealing to her gentle side (i.e. the one that cares and loves for George _very much_) and soon found herself spilling her guts to her best friends, confiding in them her scared feelings that she might lose George like she lost Fred. The whole discussion was a somewhat emotional experience and Sandy was shocked that she did not cry all the way through it.

The talk must've done better for Sandy than she had originally thought, for in the days following it, she began to warm up to George again and even he seemed to pick up on her better spirits. They still weren't as comfortable around each other as they used to be, but Sandy was genuinely pleased with the way things were going and, as cheesy as it sound, she could detect the feelings of love she'd harbored for George for the past three years starting to well up again.

Present Sandy gave a closed-lipped smile up to the moon

Oh, yes; she already knew that she was in love with him. She had ever since they'd first kissed on that fateful day in May next to a dead Fred's head (heh… Rhyming). She just had not gotten around to telling him yet.

_*Uh, huh, yeah, sure. You just keep making up excuses for being scared shitless, Sandy, while I sit with my good friend Reality here and play Poker. Tell us when you are ready to be honest with yourself.* _Her brain berated her sarcastically as it began dealing out its cards and Sandy knew she couldn't disagree with it. In truth, she really was frightened out of her knickers to admit her growing feelings to George. And he'd made it harder on her by pulling his little make-out stint with Angelina.

The grin disappeared.

And so here she was again – the image of the two of them rolling around, tangled together on George's bed, hands groping places that he _should_ only be touching on _Sandy_ and voices moaning expletives that she was surprised nobody had heard downstairs was still seared on the very fabric of her mind. Even almost a month later. The thought was enough to cause the sting of approaching tears to well up behind her eyes once again.

Imbecilic whimpering reflex.

Frankly, Sandy was surprised that she had not reacted worse than she had. George _was_ still alive, wasn't he? Sure, she may have gone a little **overboard** slugging him n the face like that (by now, if any bruise formed at all, it should've cleared up by now), but what woman would not after walking in on her boyfriend (er…) making-out with one of his former teammates – who was _female_! -- and someone who was obviously succeeding in giving him more pleasure than said, spurned woman was ever able to manage? It was all just one big stab to the back for Sandy, hence, her reason for leaving.

When she had arrived at her parents home here in Leicester, Belinda and Leeland were still there, having not returned to their own respective places in the world. Once she was gently coaxed into doing so by the soft bribery of her mother, she told everyone the whole story and they all supported her to the best of their abilities, but they all did it in different ways. Her parents just told her that she could remain as long as she wanted until she figured things out between her and George. Belinda, being her usual, helpful self, tried to have unsuccessful heart-to-hearts with Sandy that attempted to get her younger sister to reveal all of the gory details surround her and George's bumpy "relationship" and then give unwanted advice on what Sandy should do. As for Leeland, being probably the most violent one in the family, waltzed around the idea that maybe Sandy would allow him to go kick George's arse now that he finally had a legitimate excuse to.

Sandy told him absolutely not. George was _her_ problem and hers alone; not her whole family's.

The tears at last began to flow as Sandy realized what she'd just thought: George had become "her problem?"

…Was that what she really considered him as now?

Sandy thought about the concept a little more. It was true that the correlation between her and George had been going sour since he raised his voice to her during the ceremonies in May (and maybe even _before _that), but did it really mean that George had become moot to her? Did it mean that she might need **out** of all of this? Oh, Merlin, what about the others? Would she be able to keep in touch with them if she cut herself off from George for good? Was it even a good _idea _to sever ties with him? How come this concern had not come earlier and why the hell was she asking herself these questions in the third person and…

ARGH!!!!

Sandy slapped her right hand over her eyes, blocking out her view of the stars, the moon, and the black sky above, hiccupping and gulping back saliva and snot as she cried about the very prospect of actually **breaking up** with George. After years of friendship and all they've through, could she really just drop him like that? Wouldn't she be literally just running away from her "problem" if she did? _Could _she even find the courage to do it at all?

Ugh. Questions again.

She probably would have had to ask herself this sooner-or-later, her mind concluded. All of the heartache and mess George had been putting her through the past few weeks _was_ beginning to take a toll on her and there were several times when she'd wanted to throw up from the pressure of everything having to do with the red-haired man. Just because she loved him did not make the fact that she was suffering right.

Still… Years of friendship. Was it too much to ask herself to hold on a little longer?

A ruffle of feathers in the night derailed her train of thought off of its tracks and she immediately sat up, scaring Sooker into hooting at her agitatedly as he decided he'd had enough of his mistress interrupting his nap and flew towards a large oak tree behind the house in the backyard. Sandy ignored his departure and instead looked around for what had made the fluttering sound that had disrupted her alone time. She didn't have to wait long for an answer, for it came in the form of a large, dark, round object zooming out of thin air and disappearing from her field of vision as it was blocked from her by the jutting, left corner of the very roof she was sitting on. Not even a second later, a loud crash came to her ears and she realized in horror that whatever it was, _It _hadjust shattered a window.

She really did not know how the hell she'd gotten into her parents bedroom so quickly. She never remembered climbing down the lean-to with its vines of sweet pea and wisteria. She hurriedly decided that she must have Apparated without knowing it. For one distractedly humorous moment, instead of going instantly to see what had smashed into her home, she brought up her wrist to examine the watch strapped around it. It was ten fifteen.

She sprinted out of her parent's bedroom doorway and on to the landing and ran into both Belinda's and Leeland's abodes to check and make sure that the black bowling ball shape had not exploded into one of them. When she saw nothing resembling disarray in either one, she then ran to the closed panel that, when opened, revealed the stairwell going up to her attic bedroom, but had to pause when she suddenly heard her mother calling from downstairs in the living room.

"Cassandra? Sweetheart, are you alright? What was that noise?" She asked as Sandy winced at the inquiry. She planned her reply quickly before voicing it.

"Yes, mum, everything's fine! Uh… Please, don't come up here to check on me!" She shouted back in a tone cracked from crying and from not having used it for awhile. A heavy pause hung over the inside of the house for a few beats.

"Well, that doesn't exactly give me incentive to think that nothing is up." Elasia said as the creak of the couch was heard and Sandy began to panic. What in the _world _had she been thinking, retorting to her mother's query like that?

"No, really, mum! I'm fine and certainly nothing has been broken and there's absolutely _no way_ of a possibly feathery UFO sitting in my room right now. Good night!" And she stepped on to the first stair, slamming the door and locking it behind her before she had a chance to run her mouth off any more, and flew the rest of the journey up to her loft.

When she at last entered in the area, her bottom jaw came unhinged at the sight of blackish-gray feathers and glass all over the place. They were arranged in a kind of circle on the floor and on the bed, reminding her of the so-called crop-circle pictures she sometimes saw in the newspapers and on the computer her family had in the study on the ground floor. And amongst the carnage was the body of a large Gray Owl; patches of his pink skin under the feathers showing. Sandy's stomach did a flip like on a trampoline as she recognized just _who_ the bird was.

"Errol…" She whispered a bit sadly, initially thinking that he **had **to be dead after his burst through the window at light speed, but, as if hearing her say his name had revived him from the grave, Errol suddenly hooted weakly; the intonation muffled against the sheets of the bed. Then, following a few tries where he just ended up falling over, the owl stood shakily on his skinny, scaly legs and looked at her with wide eyes that almost made Sandy forget her concern for him and start thundering out in laughter. Errol pealed at her quietly a second time before bending wobbly over to pick something up in his beak and hopping across the mattress to its edge. For the first time, Sandy noticed the pure white envelope. Coming to the conclusion that Errol must've landed on it when he wrecked unceremoniously through the window, she slowly, hesitantly, came nearer to the owl and gently removed the papery-container from him.

Sandy stared hard down at the envelope, as if attempting to make it burst into flame with her mind. She'd expected (almost hoped) that it had been sent by George, but, instead, she saw Ginny's name in the return address. She really didn't know whether to be excited to get a letter from one of her best friends (that was a girl) or relieved/disappointed that it was not from the man she somewhat _wanted_ it to be from.

Oh, well… Beggars could not be choosers, she supposed. She then wondered what exactly Ginny could want from her to write so soon after Sandy had left the Burrow and she began to tear at a corner of the envelope to open it. Just as she was pulling out the letter, a resounding and deafening knock came from the door at the bottom of the staircase and she jumped, accidentally dropping both the parchment and the case it came in as her mother's voice permeated through the wood.

"Sandy, open this door right now! I know something is going on up there!" Elasia insisted as she wiggled the doorknob from her side. Sandy, falling into hysterics once more, promptly skipped over to the other side of the room to grasp at her wand. With a rapid swish-flick motion, she swiftly repaired the damaged window, cleared away the feathers littering the carpet, and then turned the tip on to Errol, who just cocked his head _faaaar_ to the left and hooted innocently.

"Sorry, Errol, but I **really **don't want her to find you." Sandy breathed to him as if he actually understood and flourished her wand again. A blinding ball of white lit its way out of the wand and engulfed Errol for a couple of moments. When it finally blinked out, where there had once been a huge, nocturnal bird was an ugly, gray, square pillow with a white feather design.

Satisfied with her handiwork, Sandy nodded once and was just about to head for the stairs when she caught sight of the envelope and parchment still on the floor. The document had landed right-side-up, the words scrawled across it glaring up at her seducingly, just _begging _her to read them. Sandy contemplated the letter for awhile longer before a louder pounding from the door made her flinch and she was jolted back into her senses.

Sandy sighed. "You're just going to have to wait for a bit, too, I guess." She said quietly as she briskly nudged both pieces under the bed skirt and then at last made her way down the steps to face the wrath of her peeved mother, who was easily just a bad as Mrs. Weasley could be annoyed.

* * *

A/N: Another long chapter. Sorry for the prolonged wait, guys. This one has been the most trouble out of any of the chapters I've completed so far. :/ This is actually something I added in last minute because, after looking over other ch. I've already finished, I realized that I've barely any from Sandy's point of view! O_o They're mostly from George's whereas the story is supposed to be from both. ...So, I stuck in this one to introduce you guys more to Sandy and to get her thoughts on some of the events that have already happened. :)

Although, now that I read it, I'm not sure if I'm happy with how I wrote it. The flow is choppy and a little, too quick and I'm a bit scared that I made Sandy too flat or some other such negative thing. As for the constellation parts, I really tried to put in some research, but I don't know how well I managed. And I don't know how believable Sandy's ADD is. -_- Plus, the flashbacks are written kind of weird and it might be like reading a shortened version of part 2 of the prologue (A Flashback Worth 7 Years), so sorry about that.

All-in-all, this chapter WORE ME OUT. I am happy with some things, though, so it's not a total waste. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. ^_^

Something Else: I start back to college on the 14th of January (Thursday of this week), so I'm not sure how much time I will have to devote to the story after my classes begin, but I will _try _to keep up with updates. Please, don't lose faith in me just yet. ;P

Okay, I'm done. Read & Review!


	10. July 24th: Dead Man's Sense of Humor

Dead Man's Sense of Humor

* * *

July 24th:

He was shocked beyond living belief when she suddenly showed up in the company of Harry and Ginny (who had themselves only said that they were taking a trip to Diagon Ally for Ginny's school supplies) that afternoon. She had strolled in like she owned the place in her mostly black attire and Doc Martin boots, trunk and all enchanted to levitate in behind her so neither of the three had to bother with carrying them.

George's lower jaw had flapped open and seemed unable to shut itself. His blue eyes were wide with surprise and a little bit of fear. One who didn't know the situation might've come to the conclusion that he had seen the ghost of Voldemort…or maybe even his dead sibling.

"Close your mouth, George. No one wants to see what you've been eating." Ginny's said tartly as she passed by him into the family room with Harry close behind. George did as ordered and swallowed the brownie he had been chewing on just as they had come through the door. He continued to stare at Cassandra, however, who stared back with a dry-scarred hand placed haughtily on her hip. Her honey eyes were narrowed, her right boot was tapping at the toes, and her hair was still as black as midnight.

George came to the point that he probably needed to say something.

"W-why are you here? I-I thought y-you'd never want to come b-back." He finally spluttered unceremoniously. Sandy rolled her pretty orbs at him with something akin to disdain.

"I'm not here because of _you._" She insisted, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm here because the others want me to be. Harry and Ginny begged me to meet them at the Cauldron and they convinced me to come back." She explained, staring him straight in the face.

George nodded slowly, dumbly. "Fair enough…" Was the only thing he could think of to say.

Sandy scoffed at him, rolling her eyes again and making a shooing gesture with her hands towards him as she followed the other two into the living room. George, ignoring the resulting squeals coming from Hermione, Fleur _and _Mrs. Weasley at the sight of Sandy, turned to the kitchen sink and braced himself on the edges of the counter, gazing furiously out of the window at the dimming sky.

"Someone up there hates me, don't they?" He asked no one in particular, squinting his own eyes as he tried to search for something that wasn't there. He blinked when he had an idea and added, "Professor Snape, I'm betting it's you."

* * *

A/N: Excessively short chapter... Sorry, guys. -_-

Hmm... Well, this _used_ to be one of my favorites of the short chapters, but now I'm a little iffy about it. The flow seems kind of off somehow in this one. :/ Oh, well. I still like it, even though it's lost a few brownie points with me. And Sandy is back at the Burrow! I wonder what this means for George...? o_O

And I'm beginning to see somewhat of a pattern with Ginny where she seems like she downright hates George, but I really did not intend this. I tried to keep as true to the original books/movies as I could and Ginny's relationship with her older brother is no exception. I'm just going to say that George's recent personality changes are wearing on her and that she dealing with it in the only way she knows how: by being blunt and sometimes mean towards him... Hopefully that explains a few things if anyone has caught on to it. :S

01/11/2010: I had to forgo posting this chapter the day after "Melody's Most Disturbing Content" in favor of taking some extra time to write an added chapter I put in last minute (Constellation Consensus). Forgive me for that one, please

Read & Review, everyone! :D


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